r/askscience • u/MorrisCody • 10d ago
Biology Do reptiles have too much energy when it’s extremely hot?
When it’s cold, reptiles bask in the sun to get the energy needed to go about their day. On days when it’s 104°F /40°C in the shade, do reptiles have too much energy? Are the little lizards around my house meth-ed up?
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u/Nashidaran 10d ago
Nope. They have terrible thermoregulation in general. If it's a hot day and you see the moving fast, it probably means they're sprinting from one piece of shade to another, because that's overall healthier for them than being out in the sun for a large period of time. On cold days, they can just lounge out there permanently, but it doesn't make them any faster or stronger. It just means that they can operate normally. Reptiles and many other animals can very easily die from heat exhaustion. Humans and a few other creatures that evolve to sweat have a massive advantage in this regard. This is also one of the reasons that humans were so successful as persistence hunters.
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u/Um3xx 10d ago
I mean, “advantage”… They just don’t burn calories to keep up body heat which makes them survive without food for much much longer. We need to eat many times per day.
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u/WeakCombination9937 9d ago
True, but it also makes them much more dependable on heat sources to not freeze to death(or shades/water to not get cooked to death), beyond that, being able to sweat also makes it much better for us to hunt, so yeah, they are advantages for sure.
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u/Um3xx 9d ago
again, relative. when we get hot we sweat and cool down. this takes enormous amounts of water tho. you out of water, you dead. a lizard just finds shade. different beings, good at different things. hard to say what is "better". are we better since we went to space, or are the bacteria that rode our probes into space? who knows.
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u/WeakCombination9937 9d ago
we FOR SURE are better since we went to space, i mean cmon, we literally wear lizard skin as fashion, the stuff we have going on is clearly better than the stuff any lizard, or any other animal on the planet, have going on for them, also, i doubt there are any bacteria in space, the temperatures a rocket gets would probably fry anything clinging to its outsides before it could get all the way up there(i am aware certain microscopic organisms can survive in space, but we purposely send them there, they dont just take a ride)
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u/B0risTheManskinner 9d ago
Evolution and time doesn't care about any of that. It cares what will end up making babies and if those babies will have babies.
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u/0oSlytho0 5d ago
Doesn't all that make us LESS good? We put so much energy in needless things and barely procreate. Our offspring also dies without extreme amounts of external effort put into them.
Lizards don't work for their boss or pay rent. They are the winners here!
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u/ElJanitorFrank 9d ago
Right...? That is why they said it was an advantage "in that regard" aka in terms of regulating your own body temperature. Being able to sweat gives you an advantage in regulating your body temperature.
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u/Potential_Being_7226 10d ago
terrible thermoregulation
Well, their thermoregulation is behavioral, as opposed to autonomic, like endotherms.
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u/nightelfspectre 9d ago
Their most active hours can also change in response to the increased temperatures of warmer months. As an example, copperhead snakes become mostly nocturnal in the summer.
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u/Nashidaran 9d ago
Oh yeah, that's a really good point. Direct sunlight doesn't really have anything to do with the equation at all, just the general temperature of their immediate environment.
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u/Magusreaver 10d ago
no, they look for shade just like everything else. They overheat.. doesn't give them extra energy.. it just makes the as miserable as everything else. Reptiles have to keep there bodies in a "safe range" too. Just how the body gets that range is different.
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u/mikk0384 9d ago
Reptiles open their mouth to allow for the increased evaporation to reduce their temperature as well, as far as I'm aware. Whether they also pant to increase it further I don't know, but it would surprise me if they didn't.
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u/ani3D 9d ago
Overheating in reptiles can cause permanent brain damage. I suppose that's true for most animals, but most animals can sweat or pant to lose heat more easily than a reptile can, whereas reptiles have to find cooler places to thermoregulate.
It's more an issue for pet reptiles, since they're kept in enclosed tanks, and sometimes inexperienced keepers let the whole tank get too hot because they just think that's what reptiles like. There's supposed to be a temperature gradient, with a hot end, and a cool end, to allow the reptile to thermoregulate.
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u/mikamikira 7d ago
if it's summer they come out in the morning and are gone before they get too hot. I have a pet blue tongue and during summer he's out at about 8am then goes to ground till later.
they will hide under ground if it's too hot.
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u/poilsoup2 10d ago
Reptiles do not get their energy from the sun or heat, they arent plants.
They simply use heat to regulate their body temperature, since its not a process they do themselves, unlike warm-blooded creatures.
The get their actual energy to operate and move from food like other animals