Survival of Intact Insects immersed in Liquid Oxygen without any Antifreeze Agent

Abstract

IT is well known that various organisms can be cooled to very low temperatures in liquid gases without injury, provided that they have previously been desiccated to some extent. Extracellular freezing is considered to be a mode of dehydrating living cells; and some organisms, at least frost-resistant ones, may withstand freezing of this type even at very low temperatures. On the other hand, many living organisms survive slow cooling to extremely low temperatures¹. This might also be explained by dehydration due to extracellular freezing. In these cases, however, the materials used were usually isolated cells or very small pieces of tissue. The largest entire animal hitherto found to survive freezing at a very low temperature is the tiny vinegar eel². Our experiments show that, after sufficient extracellular freezing, an intact insect can be kept alive at an extremely low temperature without any antifreeze agent.