The next time you have trouble getting on the treadmill, consider: if vampire (Desmodus round) you can, you can too. This may sound like a joke, and we’re not ruling out the study winning an Ig Nobel Prize next year because of how crazy it is. But this is a real investigation. a group of Canadian scientists.
They forced a group of vampire bats to run on a treadmill to test how they metabolize blood which they feed on. This is something that has attracted the attention of science for a long time. Hematophagous animals, such as vampires and many insects, feed almost entirely on blood. This means that proteins are the most abundant nutrients in your diet. If we compare it with humans and many other mammals, which primarily require lipids and carbohydrates for energy, it is incompatible. How can they metabolize these proteins and get energy fly and hunt for hours?
As incredible as it may seem, these scientists knew that the answer lay in treadmill. Very small, designed specifically for riding a vampire bat. Unlike other types of bats, they are very good at running on the ground, so this was the perfect experiment. Also very cute if you ask us.
From Human Metabolism to Vampire Bat Metabolism
When people do light aerobic exercise we get energy from lipids. We use the fat we consume and store. However, as exercise intensity increases, carbohydrate intake becomes necessary. They oxidize to form a molecule called adenosine triphosphate (ATP), which is known as the energy currency of cells. This is because it is used to give up energy or receive it as needed. To obtain energy, it loses one of its phosphates, turning into ADP. And this is converted back to ATP in a process that absorbs energy. That is why it is metaphorically considered a currency.
Animals that feed on blood, such as the vampire bat, have virtually no carbohydrates or lipids. Their diet consists mostly protein. The same thing happens with some insects. It has been observed that the latter require a long time to metabolize blood proteins. But does the same thing happen to bats?
Hematophages go to the gym
To test how these bats metabolize proteins, the study authors set up an interesting experiment.
They are taken from nature 24 specimens of adult vampire bats. and they were divided into three groups. They all ate cow bloodbut with slight differences. In one group the blood was enriched amino acid leucine. Amino acids are small bricks of which proteins are made, but not all of them can be synthesized by animal organisms. For example, mammals cannot synthesize leucine, making it an essential amino acid. It is very beneficial because it helps people build and repair muscles. That’s why it’s important that we get it through diet.
In the second group, cow’s blood was enriched amino acid glycine, which is also important and helps produce collagen and transmit signals between neurons.
Finally, there was a third group of bats that only needed unenriched cow’s blood.
Amino acids that have been used to enrich blood were labeled with a carbon isotopewhich is easy to distinguish from other carbon atoms. So all that was left was to make each vampire bat run on the treadmill.
All of them went through three speed stages: 10 m/min, 20 m/min and 30 m/min. At the same time, both their oxygen consumption and the production of carbon dioxide during the animals’ respiration were analyzed. And it was here that they discovered an interesting fact.
Fast Metabolism of the Vampire Bat
If these newly added proteins are rapidly metabolized, one would expect that the carbon isotopes used in the enriched amino acids would quickly be incorporated into carbon dioxide (CO2), which released by breathing. The carbon of the molecule will be an isotope.
And so it was. Almost immediately, isotopes could be detected in the animals’ breath. It did not matter whether the blood was enriched with a particular amino acid or not. They used all the amino acids in proteins with same efficiency.
Therefore, it is clear that vampire bats have very fast metabolisms, with exceptional reactions that directly metabolize proteins and in which, as the saying goes, if life gives them lemons, they make lemonade. The amino acid doesn’t matter, they will be able to use it equally. We have a lot to learn from them. In fact, beyond the curiosity of watching bats on a treadmill, this study helps us understand just how much of an impact running on a treadmill can have on metabolism. specialized diet.
Informational Note: No vampire bats were harmed in this experiment. They were all released back into the wild, perhaps with legs a little more muscular than normal.
Source: Hiper Textual
