Question

Describe endothermy, exothermy, homeothermy, and pokiolothermy and how each type of organism either maintains or adjusts body temperature

Answer 1

Ans:

Homeothermy is the thermoregulating process that gives the animal the ability to maintain a stable body temperature regardless of external environment temperature. These animals uses various mechanisms such as shivering, panting, perspiring etc. By shivering and contracting hairs the body tends to limit the surface area to prevent loss of heat and by panting and perspiring the body tends to keep the body cool. Another mechanism i.e; hibernation used by certain warm-blooded animals like bears, helps decreasing the heat loss from the body by means of slowing-down the bodily functions.

Pokiolotherm is the opposite of homeotherm. Here the animals internal temperature is considerably varied and depends on the external temperature. They literally have no control over their own body temperature and is greatly influenced by the temperature outside. They perform behaviours such as basking in the sun or burrowing down when its too hot.

Ectothermy (cold-blood) is nothing but a process of how animals depend on external heat sources such as reptiles and amphibians to maintain their body temperature, these organisms don't have the ability to generate enough heat so as to keep themselves warm and so are dependent on environmental sources of heat, like sunlight.

Endothermy (warm-blood) is a process where organisms uses heat generated internally to maintain their body temperature. Here metabolic activity plays a great role. For eg: Mammals generate heat within their body by increasing metabolic activitiy when the temperature outside is cold. They are less independent to the external environment's temperature.