Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Many animals have hair or fur to keep them warm. Think about the enormous polar bear and its thick coat of fur. However, researchers found when the hair was sparse, like on elephants, it serves as ...
It has been hypothesized that warm-bloodedness evolved in mammals and birds as a defense against fungal infections. Very few fungi can survive the body temperatures of warm-blooded animals. By comparison, insects, reptiles, and amphibians are plagued by fungal infections.
Most mammals also have hair to help keep them warm. Like birds, mammals can forage or hunt in weather and climates too cold for ectothermic ("cold-blooded") reptiles and insects. Endothermy requires plenty of food energy, so mammals eat more food per unit of body weight than most reptiles. [ 139 ]
Various patterns of behavior enable certain ectotherms to regulate body temperature to a useful extent. To warm up, reptiles and many insects find sunny places and adopt positions that maximise their exposure; at harmfully high temperatures they seek shade or cooler water. In cold weather, honey bees huddle together to retain heat.
Heat loss is a major threat to smaller creatures, as they have a larger ratio of surface area to volume. Small warm-blooded animals have insulation in the form of fur or feathers. Aquatic warm-blooded animals, such as seals, generally have deep layers of blubber under the skin and any pelage (fur) that they might have; both contribute to their ...
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.
The optimum body temperature range varies with species, but is typically below that of warm-blooded animals; for many lizards, it falls in the 24–35 °C (75–95 °F) range, [74] while extreme heat-adapted species, like the American desert iguana Dipsosaurus dorsalis, can have optimal physiological temperatures in the mammalian range, between ...
Having a lifespan of between 15 to 20 years, an Argentine Black and White Tegu differs from most other reptiles on this list because it’s one of the first known warm-blooded lizards.