Nature

This squirrel's body temperature drops below freezing without turning to ice

Hibernating Arctic ground squirrels let their core body temperature fall as low as -2.9°C, the coldest ever recorded in a mammal, while their blood and tissues stay perfectly liquid. There's no antifreeze involved — they survive through supercooling, a fragile state where fluids stay unfrozen below their normal freezing point as long as nothing disturbs them. They rewarm themselves every couple of weeks, all winter long.

Brian M. Barnes, Freeze Avoidance in a Mammal: Body Temperatures Below 0°C in an Arctic Hibernator — Science, vol. 244, 1989

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