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Thermoregulation is the ability of an organism to keep its body temperature within certain boundaries, even when the surrounding temperature is very different. A thermoconforming organism, by contrast, simply adopts the surrounding temperature as its own body temperature, thus avoiding the need for internal thermoregulation.
Warm-blooded animals could have gained an advantage by creating an inhospitable environment for many disease-causing organisms, thus reducing the risk of infections. Insulation and Thermoregulation: Homeothermy could have originated as a response to the development of insulating structures like fur, feathers, or other coverings. As animals ...
Thus, to Barcroft homeostasis was not only organized by the brain—homeostasis served the brain. [13] Homeostasis is an almost exclusively biological term, referring to the concepts described by Bernard and Cannon, concerning the constancy of the internal environment in which the cells of the body live and survive.
Developmental homeostasis is present not only in humans, but in animals as well. The choosing of symmetrical features over asymmetrical features have been observed in birds, lizards, Araneae, and even insects. For example, barn swallow females have been reported to prefer males whose long outer feathers are the same length on each side ...
Poikilotherm is the opposite of homeotherm – an animal which maintains thermal homeostasis. In principle, the term could be applied to any organism, but it is generally only applied to vertebrate animals. Usually the fluctuations are a consequence of variation in the ambient environmental temperature.
Stretch-activated ion channels are required for the initial formation of an action potential from a mechanical stimulus, for example by the mechanoreceptors in vibrissae (whiskers) of some animals such as rodents. Afferent nerve fibers responsible for sensory stimulus detection and feedback are especially sensitive to stimulation.
Diving reflex in a human baby. The diving reflex, also known as the diving response and mammalian diving reflex, is a set of physiological responses to immersion that overrides the basic homeostatic reflexes, and is found in all air-breathing vertebrates studied to date.
Osmoregulation is the active regulation of the osmotic pressure of an organism's body fluids, detected by osmoreceptors, to maintain the homeostasis of the organism's water content; that is, it maintains the fluid balance and the concentration of electrolytes (salts in solution which in this case is represented by body fluid) to keep the body fluids from becoming too diluted or concentrated.