How do big animals that live in warm places not overheat from all their body mass and the surrounding temperature???
In: Biology
For the same reason we don’t overheat, they sweat! Why do you think monkeys like bananas? They’re a good source of potassium, a critical electrolyte we, and monkeys, sweat out of our bodies. Not to mention the quick carbs and nutrients, they are nature’s energy bar for a reason, no matter your genus.
Same is true for hippos (who basically rely on their body being one big heat radiator because the sweat evaporates and pulls heat away from them) and weirdly enough Horses, but not really that weird when you consider that for most mammals typically release excess heat through their breath like a radiator or through their paws, and unlike most mammals, Horses wouldn’t be very effective at releasing heat through their hooves because they’re basically just big fingernails, oh, and horses typically like running, which creates a lot of heat they would want to get rid of quickly, so they sweat.
That’s also kind of why in hot climates you don’t really see big animals, because of the hot temperature it’s not evolutionarily advantageous to grow larger, because alongside larger animals creating more unwanted heat, they’re also slower, require more food to stay alive and easier targets for prey.
But you do see big animals in places where those traits are either not an issue, or are advantageous, like buffalo, they don’t need to move fast all the time to get food because they can just eat grass, which is everywhere in their natural habitat, and being big isn’t a problem because the land is wide and open, so not only can they manoeuvre their size with no issue, their predators are smaller than them (remember, small animals are faster, more nimble and require less food) and therefore their size and tendency to herd protects them.
Little side note, if you ever wonder why dog paws smell like corn chips, well, dogs do sweat, but only through their paws and their nose, so what you’re smelling on their paws is basically the doggy equivalent of what your armpits smell like after you’ve sweat a bunch. I don’t know what’s more gross about that, the dog part or the human part.
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