• Question: What are cold-blooded animals?

    Asked by seas122 to Charlotte, Jo, Kevin, Louise, Valeria on 15 Jun 2012.
    • Photo: Kevin Mahon

      Kevin Mahon answered on 15 Jun 2012:

      Animals that don’t have a means of heating their own blood such as mammals that convert the food they eat into energy. Cold blooded animals maintain their body temperature from their surroundings – to heat up their bodies they lie in the sun, to cool down they lie in the shade etc. Reptiles are the most obvious example of cold-blooded animals.

    • Photo: Joanna Cruden

      Joanna Cruden answered on 15 Jun 2012:

      All reptiles, insects, arachnids, amphibians and fish are cold-blooded

      Cold-blooded animals take on the temperature of their surroundings. They are hot when their environment is hot and cold when their environment is cold which is why if you have one as a pet it is important to maintain a warm environment but have cooler areas so they can regulate their body temperature easier.

      Cold-blooded animals are much more active in warm environments and are very sluggish in cold environments because their muscle activity depends on chemical reactions which run quickly when it is hot and slowly when it is cold. A cold-blooded animal can convert much more of its food into body mass compared with a warm-blooded animal.

      Being cold-blooded has its advantages over warm blooded animals:

      • They require much less energy to survive
      • They need less food to survive than warm blooded animals of the same weight and can burn the food more efficiently so they need less to survive

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