Home » Uncategories » Cold Blooded Animals That Live in the Desert

Cold Blooded Animals That Live in the Desert

a camel in the desert

Photos.com

Animals have some astonishing adaptations that help them live in even the near hostile environments. Consider camels, for instance. They can thrive in some of the hottest and driest places on Earth. Their legs don't go burned when they kneel on hot sand due to thick leathery patches on their knees. They tin survive for an entire calendar week without water but, at the aforementioned fourth dimension, they can drink 32 gallons of water at in one case. Their body temperature ranges from 93 °F to 107 °F, so they don't need to sweat very often and can conserve water this way. The spongy bones in their noses blot any excess moisture to keep every drop of water in, so the air they breathe out is dry air. In improver to camels, other animals' adaptations are equally remarkable. How exercise they do it? Chemistry helps!

Warm-Blooded or Cold-Blooded?

The most important adaptation is how animals regulate their body temperature. Animals tin can exist either warm-blooded or cold-blooded.

Warm-blooded animals, which are mostly birds and mammals, need to maintain a relatively abiding torso temperature or they would endure dire consequences. It doesn't matter what the outside temperature is—they must maintain the same internal temperature. For us, the normally accustomed boilerplate body temperature is 98.6 °F (fifty-fifty though it may vary among individuals). Most other mammals range from 97 °F to 103 °F; birds accept an boilerplate torso temperature of 105 °F.

Cold-blooded animals do not maintain a constant torso temperature. They go their heat from the exterior surround, so their body temperature fluctuates, based on external temperatures. If it is 50 °F exterior, their body temperature will eventually drop to fifty °F, as well. If it rises to 100 °F, their body temperature will reach 100 °F. Nigh of the rest of the animal kingdom—except birds and mammals—are common cold-blooded.

In most instances, the size and shape of an organism dictate whether information technology will be warm-blooded or cold-blooded. Think well-nigh some large animals—elephants, whales, and walruses. Their volume is so large that relying on the outside environment to heat them up would exist inefficient and would slow their response times, putting their survival at risk. For that reason, about all large animals are warm-blooded.

What near all the birds and mammals that are not big, such as mice and sparrows? The other gene—trunk shape—comes into play here. Small warm-blooded animals tend to accept a rounded shape, which ensures that the interior of an organism stays warm the longest time possible. Most cold-blooded organisms have either an elongated or a flat shape. If you wait at a typical fish, their bodies tend to be flat when viewed head-on from the front. Snakes, lizards, and worms tend to be long and slender. These shapes ensure they can oestrus upwardly and cool down rapidly.

Within a given species, animals tend to be larger in colder climates and smaller in warmer climates, an observation known equally Bergmann's dominion. For example, whitetail deer in the southern part of the United States tend to have a smaller body size and less overall mass than whitetail deer in the far northern states.

There are exceptions but, overall, this rule holds true, for the following reason: As the volume of an object decreases, the ratio of its surface expanse to its volume increases. In other words, the smaller an animal is, the higher the surface area-to-volume ratio. These animals lose estrus relatively quickly and cool down faster, then they are more than likely to be institute in warmer climates. Larger animals, on the other paw, accept lower expanse-to-volume ratios and lose heat more than slowly, then and they are more likely to be found in colder climates.

Generating Free energy

Warm-blooded animals crave a lot of energy to maintain a constant body temperature. Mammals and birds require much more food and energy than exercise cold-blooded animals of the same weight. This is because in warm-blooded animals, the heat they lose is proportional to the surface area of their bodies, while the heat they produce is proportional to their mass. This means that larger warm-blooded animals can generate more rut than they lose and they can proceed their body temperatures stable more easily. Smaller warm-blooded animals lose heat more quickly. So, it is easier to stay warm by existence larger. Warm-blooded animals cannot be likewise modest; otherwise, they will lose heat faster than they tin can produce it.

This energy produced by warm-blooded animals mostly comes from food. Food represents stored chemic energy (potential energy), which is converted into other forms of energy within the torso when the nutrient is metabolized. Metabolism refers to the all of a body's chemical reactions.

The metabolism of nutrient within the body is often referred to as internal combustion, since the aforementioned byproducts are generated every bit during a typical combustion reaction—carbon dioxide and water. And like combustion reactions, metabolic reactions tend to be exothermic, producing heat.

For a warm-blooded animal, nutrient is not just a luxury—it is a thing of life and decease. If food is not available for free energy, the body's fat is burned. Once fat reserves are used up, death is imminent if a food source is not found. The smaller the warm-blooded beast, the more it must swallow—relative to its torso size—to continue its internal furnace stoked. That's why most songbirds fly south for the winter.

These turtles just walked out of a pool of cool water

These turtles just walked out of a pool of cool water.

NASA/JPL-CALTECH

On the other hand, cold-blooded animals require less free energy to survive than warm-blooded animals do, because much of the energy that drives their metabolism comes from their surroundings. It is common to meet turtles basking in the sunday on rocks and logs. They are non trying to get a suntan, but rather are revving up their metabolism. The sun gives them an free energy boost. Muscle activeness in cold-blooded animals depends on chemical reactions, which run rapidly when it is hot and slowly when it is cold (because the reacting molecules movement faster when temperature increases).

Some reptiles, such equally the python, tin go a yr without eating, considering they exercise non use food to produce body heat. And if they prevarication still, they use fiddling free energy, and then they can afford to eat little.

Cold-blooded animals have a disadvantage compared to warm-blooded animals: There is a certain temperature below which their metabolism just won't piece of work. The reason is that all chemical reactions slow downward as the temperature is lowered, so at low temperatures, all the chemic reactions in an organism boring downward.

You lot may notice that few cold-blooded animals are agile in the winter, and the further north you go, the rarer they become. By contrast, warm-blooded animals are present in a wider variety of environments and for a longer part of the twelvemonth than cold-blooded animals.

Hibernation

For warm-blooded animals that don't migrate, 1 way to survive the winter is to sleep through information technology. Hibernation is a great strategy that enables animals to conserve energy when food is scarce. During hibernation, trunk temperature drops, animate and center rate slows, and most of the body's metabolic functions are put on agree in a state of quasi-suspended animation.

It is about as if the warm-blooded animate being becomes cold-blooded, as its trunk temperature drops considerably. But they are nonetheless alive, and they alive off their fatty reserves. Hibernation for extended periods of time is only accomplished by those animals that tin store a nifty deal of body fatty, such as bears, groundhogs, and chipmunks. A black bear loses 15%–xxx% of its weight while hibernating.

Cold-blooded animals hibernate, too. But they demand to store less fat than warm-blooded animals because they crave less free energy. Turtles and frogs bury themselves in mud under lakes and ponds for upwards to six months at a time, and for all practical purposes, they appear dead. At that place are no external signs of life.

When many common cold-blooded animals hibernate, something interesting happens at the cellular level. The fluid around the cells, only non in the cells, is frozen solid. Every bit water freezes exterior the cell, water from within the jail cell is drawn out through osmosis. Osmosis is a process in which h2o moves across a semipermeable membrane—in this example, the prison cell membrane—from an surface area of low solute concentration to an surface area of high solute concentration.

As water freezes exterior of the prison cell, the solute concentration increases, considering the quantity of liquid water decreases while the amount of solute stays the same. As a result, water flows out of the cell to equalize the concentrated solution outside of the cell (Fig. 2).

At the same fourth dimension water is leaving the cells, glucose migrates into the cells in copious amounts. By removing water and adding glucose, the concentration of dissolved solute within the cell increases—a lot. The glucose acts as a natural antifreeze, as any solute will lower the freezing point of a given solvent—in this case, water. The presence of high concentrations of solutes in the cells allows animals such equally frogs to hibernate at temperatures below freezing and still survive. While the water around the cells is frozen, the water in the cells is not. If water within a cell were to freeze, the jail cell membrane would be ruptured, killing the cell.

woman trying to keep warm in the winter

ISTOCK

Keeping Warm

When it is cold outside, you put on more wearing apparel. Your wintertime glaze does non keep out the common cold, but rather keeps in the estrus. (Cold itself doesn't exist—it is but the absence of heat; encounter the article titled "Why Common cold Doesn't Be," on p. 10.) Birds and mammals also rely on insulation to prevent estrus loss. The nigh effective insulation traps air, since air is one of the all-time insulators. Wool tends to exist warm because its fibers are curled, effectively trapping air and keeping you (and sheep) warm. Birds fluff up their feathers when they want to stay warm, since fluffing introduces air.

artist's representation of human arteries

For mammals without hair, insulation is achieved by blubber, a thick layer of fat tissue which helps to insulate an fauna's trunk because fat does not transfer heat as well equally muscle and skin. This blubber may exist 2 anxiety thick in some whales! Whales, tuna, dolphins, and other warm-blooded marine animals also rely on another ingenious method to conserve heat. To forestall excessive heat loss from extremities such as fins and flippers—which are not well insulated—aquatic animals rely on a "countercurrent heat-commutation method," in which the arteries that carry warm blood away from the heart are positioned directly against the veins that carry cool claret to the heart. And so, the warmer blood leaving the middle through the arteries warms the cooler blood inbound the heart through the veins.

In contrast to birds and mammals, lizards, frogs, snakes, and other cold-blooded animals do not need insulation—it would only slow down estrus transfer into their bodies.

man wiping sweat off of his forehead

Shutterstock

Keeping Cool

When you become hot, what'due south the first affair that happens? You start to sweat. The average adult has iii million sweat glands. Information technology'southward not the sweating that cools you, but rather the evaporation of this sweat. Evaporation is an endothermic phase modify, meaning information technology must absorb energy to occur. This free energy is drawn from your body, making you libation.

American Hairless Terriers have sweat glands all over their body, but not hair or fur.

Photos.com

Anytime you lose free energy, your body will feel cool. Evaporation requires energy because forces of attraction between h2o molecules—chosen intermolecular forces—need to be broken when water goes from a liquid to a gas. In liquid water, the molecules are close together and are attracted to one some other. Evaporation requires energy because the intermolecular forces of attraction between h2o molecules in the liquid stage must exist overcome when h2o goes from a liquid to a gas. The energy that goes into overcoming these attractive forces comes from your trunk.

Do animals sweat? Virtually don't, but some do. Dogs sweat mainly between the pads on the bottom of their paws. Ane notable exception is the American hairless terrier, which has sweat glands all over its trunk, illustrating the fact that fur tends to inhibit sweating because if the sweat tin't evaporate information technology doesn't help in the cooling procedure.

Cats not only have sweat glands on the pads of their anxiety, but too on their tongues! When a cat licks itself, it may not exist only to keep clean, merely it could also be to cool itself equally the saliva on their fur evaporates. Kangaroos will lick their forearms for the same reason.

Kangaroos keep cool by licking their forearms.

Shutterstock

The cardinal to surviving in hot climates is non only to proceed your torso from overheating but also to prevent water loss. Animals that are adapted to desert life are not heavy sweaters—because water is scarce, they cannot beget to lose information technology by sweating. Likewise, a great deal of water is lost through animate out, so desert animals expel dry out air, reabsorbing the water in their jiff before it has a take chances to be expelled.

The ability of animals to suit to extreme environments is quite remarkable. Whether it is in the freezing corners of Siberia or the sizzling hot desert of the Sahara, animals e'er find ways to survive, and how they do it will never cease to amaze us!

Brian Rohrig teaches chemistry at Metro Early on College High School in Columbus, Ohio. His virtually recent ChemMatters article, "Not Milk? Living with Lactose Intolerance," appeared in the April 2013 event.