Behavioural Thermoregulation

Abstract

We should be surprised if animals did not react to temperature at all. Indeed, we are often first aware of their temperature responses when we observe their attempts to occupy favourable thermal conditions. Even in our own case, we commonly respond to the stirnulus of heat or cold by doing something, by opening the windows or by putting on a coat. Man’s success in inhabiting the whole range of the earth’s climatic conditions is in fact attributable more to his behaviour than to any special physiological performance. He may live happily at the South Pole by providing for himself a protected climate within his clothing or his heated buildings, by which he actually avoids the polar conditions, or he may reside with complete comfort in the humid tropics by providing his dwellings with artificial ventilation or even full air-conditioning. Although animals obviously lack man’s technological skills, they share with him this ability to seek out or to create protected niches within a hostile climatic zone, such that their physiology may differ in no way from that of related species living in more temperate regions. Nest-building may greatly enhance the insulation available to an arctic animal, while burrowing or nocturnal behaviour make the hottest deserts inhabitable even by small rodents.