Seriously, a bad sunburn could limit our ability to survive in the wild. I’ve had a few so bad I could barely move and I had a super high fever. Desn’t that happen to animals? How do they manage?
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I’m no expert, but fur and feathers are protecting the animals skin from the harmful rays that cause sunburn. Without fur, animals like dogs and cats will get burned from too much sun.
Animals can absolutely get sunburnt too.
They just have adaptations to help protect against it. The same way humans with ancestry closer to the equator have more melanin that those from more northern latitudes.
Mammals with hair/fur are obviously protected by their fur. Same goes to animals with feathers. The same way our clothing blocked sunlight so does their fur/feathers.
Ones without like elephants, rhinos, hippos, all have very very thick skin.
Then reptile scales are completely different than skin, and also very thick, to be able to be out in the sun.
Animals, especially those without fur/scales, can totally get sunburnt. They learned to coat themselves in mud, hippos sweat out something that works like sunscreen for them, elephants throw sand on their back. Basically, they evolved to be in the conditions they live in, and they found some sort of solution it seems. If they did not find a way to stay out of the sun & didn’t know to do this they totally would fry their skin.
My girlfriends horse gets sunburn on its nose a lot so she has to apply sunscreen to it pretty regularly in the summer time. Other than that I
couldn’t name another animal that gets sunburn. Was surprised myself when I learned lol
Also, many animals live in places where they evolved over ages to adapt (ex. Polar bear fur for snowy climates, etc), but humans have been travelling for ages. So, as a white-skinned Canadian, my body is built for northern Scotland where the risk of sunburn is very low. The indigenous ppl who lived here for thousands of years have skin less prone to bad burns. Also, we screwed up the ozone layer, so everyone is susceptible to bad burns and skin cancer anyway.
White and maybe other light skinned cats can get skin cancer, mostly on their ears.
Birds’ skin produce some kind of protective wax, so the bald-headed birds like vultures don’t get burnt.
Your premise is wrong, not only animals do get sunburnt, a lot of humans (mostly black people) only get sunburnt to an extent.
You get a serious sunburn because you spend 99% of the time not directly exposed to sunlight. People like pro cyclists only get mild sunburns (if at all) on their face/arms/legs because they are exposed all year long so they have a nice coating of melanine.
I have sunscreen for my dog. She’s a pit mix with short hair and can turn very pink in the sun!
Aside from the fact that animals can get sunburnt. I think the core of your issue is that you were suddenly exposed to a lot sunlight while you were completely not used to it, if you slowly adjusted to it instead of suddenly spending a lot of time in intense sunlight while you never did that before, you would have probably been much better off.
Human skin gets darker/lighter with exposure to sunlight, as well as people evolved lighter/darker skin corresponding to the region they were living in.
Take these two factors into account, and it wouldn’t hinder them as much, cause they would be used to it, and have also evolved the skin color to deal with it.
Dogs can definitely get sunburnt. There is a pretty common treatment of tattooing the top portion of their nose black to help combat it. Common in collies but can also happen to huskies or malamutes. Nose is mostly black but might have pink section, or the fur is real thin just behind their nose.
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