Shrews have been found to shrink and regenerate tissue in their heads in response to seasonal variations:
Common shrews shrink their heads — including their skulls — in winter, researchers have found. They believe that this dramatic example of downsizing may help the animals to survive when food is scarce.
Individual wild common shrews (Sorex araneus) captured and tagged in Germany showed large reductions in skull size and body mass over the winter. Their spines also got shorter, and major organs, including the heart, lungs and spleen, shrank. Even their brain mass dropped by 20–30%, according to Javier Lázaro, a biologist at the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Radolfzell, Germany. In spring, the animals started to regrow.
"We hypothesize that these seasonal changes could have adaptive value," says Lázaro, who led the work. Shrews have an extremely fast metabolism, he points out, and reducing their body mass during winter might increase their chances of survival, because they wouldn't need so much food. In particular, he adds, "reducing brain size might save energy, as the brain is energetically so expensive".
Also at The Guardian.
Profound reversible seasonal changes of individual skull size in a mammal (DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2017.08.055) (DX)
(Score: 1, Disagree) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday October 28 2017, @12:38AM (2 children)
Somebody's still salty that the quarterback fucked his girlfriend in high school. Socializing over sports is really quite fun. You should try it sometime. American football and everybody-else football are a fucking blast to watch drinking at bars.
You don't even have to play to embrace your inner meat-head and hoot and hollar at the TV like a drunken ape amongst apes.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 28 2017, @12:34PM
> Socializing over sports is really quite fun.
Speak for yourself, bread and circuses (modern equivalents = beer and football) usually give me a headache and feelings of time wasted. And that's before any effects from the ethanol kick in.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Monday October 30 2017, @09:14PM
It's not about meat-head stereotypes. Playing football can literally cause the brain to shrink.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/07/160721103846.htm [sciencedaily.com]