I'd like to say 2 things on the subject:
1.
Suspended animation is real. I have been fascinated for quite some time now and have witnessed it. I raised 3 kinds of animals: Sea-Monkeys, brine shrimps (essentially the same) and Triops.
Brineshrimps(artemia to be precise) These are little shrimpies (as the name suggests) which happily swim around in the great salt lakes in the VS. They lay eggs which can stay in hibernation
period for years. And years. And...some more years. Until finally, the right requirements are met, and the egg starts to hatch, spawning a fresh and healthy
little brine shrimp, ready to repeat this action. (Note that this period is flexible, not fixed. It can take 10 years for an egg to hatch, or it takes a week.)
Triops Another interesting bloke is the triops (tri = three, ops = eye). This also shows a better case of hibernation.
In the spring, rain starts to fall in areas where it is normally drie most of the times. Within the dry earth are small eggs from the triops. They hatch when in
contact with water. The rain continues to fall during a long period, forming a big pool, or temporary pond if you will. Triops swim, grow, mate and lay eggs
happily here for around 50 days. Then they die.
Suddenly, just after the dying of the triops, the dry season starts, drainging the pool from its last water. 'Damn', you think, 'waht about the poor eggs?'. Don't worry, they're in a happy state of hibernation! Until next year, or the year after, or a lot of years, until the right amount of rain will fall on them so they can hatch and breed as they're ancestors have done.
Sounds pretty dumb way of living, huh? Nevertheless, Triops have continued to survive since the Triassic period (yes, that's
220 million years) practically without changing or evolving. The only species of which I know that has survived longer is the dragonfly, with 320 million years and running.
This is a brine shrimp
A sea-monkey in all it's glory
And the fearsome Triops
2.
The second thing I wanted to say is shorter but also more interesting concerning the topic.
When a person accidently slips under the ice, first you try to get out again. If you do not succeed in doing this within 3-6 minutes, your body takes preventative measurements: it start with shutting down blood supply to non-vital parts of the body. After another 2-3 minutes, it shuts down your senses and consiousness. Your speed with which your blood streams through your body is reduced to almost 0 km/h. Your heartrate is decreased to about 1 beat every 2 minutes. Your whole body slips into a sort of super-rest state, in which you consume so little energy and oxygen, you are capable of staying quite alive for a while under the ice (think about 3-6 hours, if not more).
That's why it scares the friggen daylight out of people when they pull a ice-cold, stiff-as-a-board -supposed- corpse out of the water which suddenly seems te be alive and jumping! Rushing with the body to safety, warmth, aministrating CPR, etc.
So you see, your body, after all, is still the best method to save yourself, wether from disease or coldness, when it comes hard-to-hard, it knows how to deal with situations.
NOTE: although it's quite remarkable what happens, it also could happen that, because of the lack of blood, a limb (or more) is frozen off. But what is a limb for a life?
I hope I've explained it clearly, and at least proven a bit that hibernation with people isn't that strange...
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