Summary: 189
THE JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL BIOLOGY 207 (2)
HEAT HELPS DOVES KEEP
THEIR COOL
When the going gets hot, most creatures
head for shade. But not white-winged
doves. They spend the summer in the
Sonoran desert where they are perfectly
content perched on saguaro cacti, even
when the mercury tops 50°C. As Andrew
McKechnie explains, there's only one-way
to stay cool in those conditions; by
evaporation, and white-winged doves are
particularly good at it. Most animals
manage to keep their temperature down
either by evaporating water across the skin,
or by panting as the temperatures soar. But
McKechnie and Blair Wolf wondered how
good the birds are at adjusting to rapid
temperature changes. Could they modify

Source: Altimiras, Jordi - Department of Biology, Linköpings Universitet

Collections: Environmental Sciences and Ecology