Torpor, sometimes called temporary hibernation is a ( usually short-term ) state of decreased physiological activity in an animal, usually characterized by a reduced body temperature and rate of metabolism.

Torpor is often used to help animals survive during periods of colder temperatures, as it allows the organism to save the amount of energy that would normally be used to maintain a high body temperature.

Torpor may extend for a longer period of time: Lungfish switch to the torpor state if their pool dries out ; and tenrecs switch to the torpor state if food is scarce during the summer in Madagascar.

Torpor is important in daily cycles to conserve energy as well as prolonged torpor, or hibernation.

Torpor is alternatively used as a reference to any non-physiological state of inactivity.

A third album, The Further Somniloquies of Dion McGregor: More Outrageous Recordings of the World's Most Renowned Sleeptalker was assembled by Toronto poet Steve Venright and released in August 2004 on the Torpor Vigil Industries label.

Ravnos eventually fell into Torpor and the clan restructured.

It is also possible, but equally doubtful, that he actually shot down the hundreds of men with which his legend credits him.

Let me pass over the trip to Sante Fe with something of the same speed which made Mrs. Roebuck `` wonduh if the wahtahm speed limit '' ( 35 m.p.h. ) `` is still in ee-faket ''.

The place is inhabited by several hundred warlike women who are anachronisms of the Twentieth Century -- stone age amazons who live in an all-female, matriarchal society which is self-sufficient ''.

It is the last of the three tests of manhood which the women impose, to discover if a male is worthy of survival there.

It took thirty of our women almost six moons to build this one, which is higher and stronger than the old one.

`` I'd like to know just which it is that those guys don't understand, the liquor or automobiles ''.

The woman eyed the youth with the avidity a coin collector might display toward a rare doubloon which is not yet in his collection.

It is these other differences between North and South -- other, that is, than those which concern discrimination or social welfare -- which I chiefly discuss herein.

It became the sole `` subject '' of `` international law '' ( a term which, it is pertinent to remember, was coined by Bentham ), a body of legal principle which by and large was made up of what Western nations could do in the world arena.

Of greater importance, however, is the content of those programs, which have had and are having enormous consequences for the American people.

Recognizing that the Rule of Law is `` a dynamic concept which should be employed not only to safeguard the civil and political rights of the individual in a free society '', the Congress asserted that it also included the responsibility `` to establish social, economic, educational and cultural conditions under which his legitimate aspirations and dignity may be realized ''.

For better or for worse, we all now live in welfare states, the organizing principle of which is collective responsibility for individual well-being.

That is particularly true of sovereignty when it is applied to democratic societies, in which `` popular '' sovereignty is said to exist, and in federal nations, in which the jobs of government are split.

There had been a good second or two during which my muffler had been blowing out, and now I was certain I'd seen her somewhere before.

He had never seen her before, but now he thought of the manner in which he and Benson went in and out of the cities, at each end of their run.

An example of the changes which have crept over the Southern region may be seen in the Southern Negro's quest for a position in the white-dominated society, a problem that has been reflected in regional fiction especially since 1865.

He could also hear the stream which he had seen from his position.

Definition of the thighs at the uppermost part is quite commonly seen in most championship Olympic lifters which is easily understandable.

Fantastic colors are to be seen in the fanciful formations of eroded rock which loom out of the semiarid country in both parks.

The video signal is amplified and then switched, in synchronism with the three ultraviolet light sources which are sequenced by the rotating mirror so that during one-twentieth of a second only one wavelength, corresponding to red, green, or blue, is seen.

The total picture is only seen by the camera which integrates the many sector scans over the entire 90-degree rotation period.

Third, the process of calcification is seen to begin later and to continue much longer for these boys than for the girls, a fact which confirms data for other groups of children.

The interaction effect, which is significant at the level, can be seen best in the contrast of mean scores.

Psychical blindness is a condition in which there is a total absence of visual memory-images, a condition in which, for example, one is unable to remember something just seen or to conjure up a memory-picture of the visible appearance of a well-known friend in his absence.

But these are dreamed in original action, in some particular continuity which we don't remember having seen in real life.

Hereby, the external object viewed by the eyes remains the thing that is seen, not the retinal image, the purpose of which would be to achieve perceptive cooperation by stirring sympathetic impulses in the other sensory centers, motor tensions, associated word symbols, and consciousness.

Garth was prepared to be helpful in what he referred to with fastidious distaste as this unfortunate Johnston affair, which would not, he said more than once, have ever come about if Mrs. Meeker had only seen fit to consult Mr. Hohlbein or him about it.

`` This is one of the major items in the Fulton County general assistance program '', the jury said, but the State Welfare Department `` has seen fit to distribute these funds through the welfare departments of all the counties in the state with the exception of Fulton County, which receives none of this money.

The Leningrad Kirov Ballet, which opened a series of performances Friday night at the Opera House, is, I think, the finest `` classical '' ballet company I have ever seen, and the production of the Petipa-Tschaikowsky `` Sleeping Beauty '' with which it began the series is incomparably the finest I have ever had the pleasure of witnessing.

In any event, it is an irreversible step, and if we are at all honest with ourselves, we will know we have no other alternative than to live in the world in which God has seen fit to place us.

She promised that she would soon take a few day's leave and visit the uncle she had never seen, on the island of Oyajima -- which was not very far from Yokosuka.

She glanced at the man nodding beside her, a man with weather cracks furrowed into his lean cheeks, with powdery pale eyes reflecting all the droughts he had seen, reflecting the sky and the drought which must follow now in August -- yes, with eyes predicting the drought and here it was only June, only festival time again and thoughts of Gratt Shafer would not leave her.

His mother, who had seen little of him for four years, appeared worried about his sailing off by himself for an Orient which, she herself having slight knowledge of it, had to be distrusted.

This continued most of the week following that ill-starred trip to church, during which period Mike stayed in his room and usually in a trance so deep that Jubal would have pronounced him dead had he not seen it before.

Observing logs typically record details about which objects were observed and when, as well as describing the details that were seen.

In the 1940s, Joan appeared on-stage in an Agatha Christie play, Appointment with Death, which was seen by Christie who wrote in a note to her, " I hope one day you will play my dear Miss Marple ".