{"id":3584,"date":"2025-11-15T17:29:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-15T22:29:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bc362\/?p=3584"},"modified":"2025-11-15T17:29:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-15T22:29:08","slug":"reflection-2-harp-seals-fat-metabolism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bc362\/2025\/11\/15\/reflection-2-harp-seals-fat-metabolism\/","title":{"rendered":"Reflection 2: Harp seals + fat metabolism"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">In elementary school one of my absolute favorite animals was the harp seal. I created many presentations on these seals, but I never really understood the biochemistry behind their ability to survive in the frigid saltwater of the North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans. The lecture on fat metabolism, and more specifically the beta-oxidation pathway, made me realize just how much energy is stored if fat (and blubber). I was surprised to learn that beta-oxidation produces 6.6 ATP molecules per carbon compared to 5.3 ATP molecules per carbon for glucose. Furthermore, harp seals live in the ocean, so they struggle to find freshwater which is essential for survival. Fortunately, a byproduct of the beta-oxidation reaction is water, which allows these seals to have available freshwater without needing to get it from their environment. Lastly, I find it fascinating that the same mechanism that allows seals to survive in the arctic also helps so many other animals survive in their own unique environments. For example, the same beta-oxidation reaction helps camels survive in the desert, monarch butterflies migrate across North America, and bears hibernate in the winter.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In elementary school one of my absolute favorite animals was the harp seal. I created many presentations on these seals, but I never really understood the biochemistry behind their ability to survive in the frigid saltwater of the North Atlantic &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bc362\/2025\/11\/15\/reflection-2-harp-seals-fat-metabolism\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18925,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[349081],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bc362\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3584"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bc362\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bc362\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bc362\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18925"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bc362\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3584"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bc362\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3584\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3585,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bc362\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3584\/revisions\/3585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bc362\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bc362\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bc362\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}