Warm Blooded Animals

We explain what warm-blooded animals are, their characteristics and various examples. Also, what are cold-blooded animals?

What are warm-blooded animals?

warm blooded animals are those that are able to maintain their body temperature relatively constant, regardless of environmental conditions in which they are found. They are also known as homeotherms because they preserve internal homeostasis, that is, the internal thermal balance. In this they differ from cold-blooded animals, which depend on the environment to warm or cool them.

This difference is known as thermoregulation. It is common, therefore, for cold-blooded animals to expose themselves to the sun to warm themselves, for example, while warm-blooded animals have their own physiological and bodily strategies to conserve heat, such as shivering, sweating, expanding or contracting their muscles. blood vessels, panting, among others. Warm-blooded animals include mammals and birds, including humans

However, when we talk about warm-blooded animals, we are actually referring to three different aspects of thermoregulation, which most of these animals present:

• Endothermy. It consists of the ability to maintain the internal temperature in a stable range, thanks to dynamics such as panting, vasodilation, shivering or fat burning.
• Homeothermy. It consists of the consumption of chemical energy from food to maintain body temperature well above the temperature of the environment.
• tachymetabolism. It consists of the ability to maintain the metabolism acting at high levels (that is, consuming a lot of energy and producing a lot of heat) despite the animal being in a state of rest. That is, the metabolism is always on.

It is important to understand that although animals were traditionally classified between those that are cold-blooded and those that are warm-blooded, contemporary research has revealed that this is not a simple and complete division. In reality, these categories operate as the extremes of a spectrum when it comes to thermoregulation.

That is, animals may have more or fewer strategies to adapt to changes in environmental temperature: in some cases they are bodily strategies and in others they are environmental strategies, and in most a combination of both.

See also: Endothermic reactions

Characteristics of warm-blooded animals

In general, warm-blooded animals are characterized by the following:

• have fast metabolisms, always on which consume a large amount of energy and generate a lot of heat. For this reason, the body temperature of these animals normally exceeds that of the environment.
• Your body temperature is independent of the environment that is, they can be kept warm in winter, or in the absence of sunlight, or cool under the summer sun. For this they have their own body mechanisms (which does not mean that they do not also try to provide relief by varying the conditions of the environment).
• Their higher degree of metabolic activity allows them to have more complex and energy-intensive internal organs (like brains) and therefore require a larger and more continuous food supply compared to cold-blooded animals.
• have a constant body temperature in a range close to 37 °C (for mammals) and 40 °C (for birds). This means that they do not become lethargic in the cold, like cold-blooded animals, and that their physiological processes occur optimally (breathing, digesting, etc.).

Examples of warm blooded animals

Some examples of warm-blooded animals are:

• Dogs and other canids such as the hyena or the jackal. These quadruped animals, both in their domestic and wild species, are warm-blooded creatures that in situations of high body heat resort to a characteristic panting, with their tongue out, to release water vapor and cool down.
• The humans. Like the body of other mammals, that of human beings has different tools to deal with variations in body temperature. For example, in situations of increased environmental temperature, the body produces sweating to cool the skin by evaporation and the blood vessels dilate to release heat; while in situations of ambient cold, blood vessels retract to preserve body heat, and the body shivers to produce muscle heat and burns fat as an alternative source of chemical energy.
• Camels and dromedaries. These camelids are typical of arid and hot climates, such as hot tropical deserts, and have a higher limit of tolerance to body heat than other mammals, to delay sweating and not lose vital fluids. These dynamics allow them to withstand very extreme conditions; in addition, they have large fat reserves in the hump that they can draw on in cold conditions.
• Cats and other felines such as the lion, the puma or the lynx. In addition to the thermoregulation traits that these animals share with other mammals, cats have the ability to thicken or thin their fur depending on environmental conditions. Thus, in cold times, they gain hair and facilitate the retention of body heat; while in hot times, they lose hair to cool the surface of the body.
• The whales. These large marine mammals can submerge in the deep waters of the ocean for long periods of time, thanks to their large lung capacity and also their fat reserves that allow them to sustain the energy consumption of their metabolism (and therefore the heat). body) despite being far from the sun in cold, dark waters.

Other examples of warm-blooded animals are:

• Chickens and poultry.
• Apes, macaques and monkeys.
• Birds of prey and scavengers, such as the condor, the vulture, the falcon, among others.
• Pigs, cows, sheep and goats.
• Antelope, elk, deer and deer.
• Rhinos, elephants and hippos.
• Rheas, ostriches and large flightless birds.
• Rats, hamsters and rodents of all kinds.
• Owls and other nocturnal birds.
• Other aquatic mammals such as seal, sea lion, dolphin.

cold blooded animals

cold blooded animals They are those who do not have bodily and metabolic tools to maintain their body temperature and therefore they must turn to the environment to do so: exposing themselves to the sun when their temperature drops and submerging themselves in water when their temperature rises.

This means that your body temperature is just above the environment, and that have slower and simpler metabolisms which plunge them into torpor during the cold. Cold-blooded animals include reptiles, amphibians, most fish, arthropods, and invertebrate animals.

References

• “Warm blood” on Wikipedia.
• “Do you know the difference between cold-blooded and warm-blooded animals?” (video) in Digital Biosphere.
• “Warm- and Cold-Blooded Animals” at Texas Parks & Wildlife (USA).
• “Warm-bloodedness (physiology)” in The Encyclopaedia Britannica.