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Mammals are also known to reside at high altitude and exhibit a striking number of adaptations in terms of morphology, physiology and behaviour. The Tibetan Plateau has very few mammalian species, ranging from wolf , kiang (Tibetan wild ass), goas , chiru (Tibetan antelope), wild yak , snow leopard , Tibetan sand fox , ibex , gazelle ...
Typically mammalian skin consists of collagen fibers arranged in a felt-work pattern, with no preferential fiber orientation. [12] However, the structures of skin in bats, birds, and gliding lizards are very different from those of typical mammalian skin. The structural arrangement of the fibers within bat wing skin enables the bat to act like ...
Some adaptations required to adjust to non-aquatic life include the movement and use of alternating limbs, the use of pelvic appendages as sturdy propulsors, and the use of a solid surface at the organism's base to generate propulsive force required for walking.
Acclimatization occurs in a short period of time (hours to weeks), and within the organism's lifetime (compared to adaptation, which is evolution, taking place over many generations). This may be a discrete occurrence (for example, when mountaineers acclimate to high altitude over hours or days) or may instead represent part of a periodic cycle ...
The word skin originally only referred to dressed and tanned animal hide and the usual word for human skin was hide. Skin is a borrowing from Old Norse skinn "animal hide, fur", ultimately from the Proto-Indo-European root *sek-, meaning "to cut" (probably a reference to the fact that in those times animal hide was commonly cut off to be used as garment).
Several mammal groups have independently evolved prickly protrusions of the skin – echidnas , the insectivorous hedgehogs, some tenrecs (a diverse group of shrew-like Malagasy mammals), Old World porcupines and New World porcupines (another biological family of rodents).
Adaptation is an observable fact of life accepted by philosophers and natural historians from ancient times, independently of their views on evolution, but their explanations differed. Empedocles did not believe that adaptation required a final cause (a purpose), but thought that it "came about naturally, since such things survived."
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.