Asked what happens when fat regulation fails in marine mammals, biologist Jane Khudyakov pitches them as natural models of 'healthy obesity'. She studies elephant seals, which cycle through huge fat gains and losses.
haven't.
But I probably haven't asked either. Yeah,
yeah, no, it's hard to tell. And so they're kind of these models of healthy adiposity. So, and have received a lot of attention and especially kind of thinking from a comparative perspective, right? Are there features of fat storage and handling in marine mammals? It's something similar to metabolically healthy obesity. So marine mammals can have up to 50% body fat, which is wild, right? So I think like the, you know, that would be considered life-threatening kind of level of adiposity in humans would absolutely be associated with some sort of cardiovascular metabolic pathology. So the interesting thing is in the marine mammals, like the main upper constraint on adiposity is just like buoyancy, right? If you have too many fats, you can't dive. And then that makes you a bad marine mammal because you can't eat. And in fact, the most unhealthy thing in marine mammals is to be too skinny, to not have enough fat. So, and then in general, you know, neonates are born with small amounts of fat. It kind of depends on the species, but they have this amazing ability to gain fat. Incredibly rapidly.
Tell the hooded seal.
Oh, yes. So the hooded seal is like, oh, God, I would love to get some samples from hooded seals. That's like a pie dream. The pup nurses for four days, at which point it is weaned. So it gains the majority of the fat resources. It needs to be more independent and thermoregulate in four days.…
I think that's a fantastic segue into how do you study this?