Beat the Heat: Animal-Style

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Beat the Heat: Animal-Style

Too hot outside to comfortably recline in your poolside lounge chair while sipping your icy margarita from a chilled glass? It’s okay – you get inside your perfectly air-conditioned house and cool off to your heart’s content!

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be unable to enjoy the modern luxury of an air-conditioned car, house, office, and building you walk into? It is almost hard to imagine not being able to switch on a fan or an AC and immediately feel relief from the sweltering heat, especially for those who live out southwest in the United States. We wouldn’t be able to live in this hot of a climate were it not for modern air conditioning Chandler AZ.

However, if you were an animal, how do you imagine you would keep cool in the hot sun? We see animals every day, from the bunnies in our backyards to the elephants at the zoo, all feeling the same heat we are. But, unlike our beloved canines and indoor cats who get round-the-clock shade and customized temperature-controlled air-conditioned zones in your house, wild animals must find unique ways to battle rising temperatures.

Animals have a knack for finding ways to beat the heat. Whether they live in the sweltering jungles of India or the sandy deserts of Arizona, animals will always come up with a relief solution.

Here are some ways that animals around the world tackle the age-old problem of beating the heat.

  • Ears that Radiate Heat

You may not know this, but some animals have evolved to have those adorably large ears so that they can cool off. Elephants, rabbits, bats, coyotes, and even mice are a few of the animal species that use radiating heat to regulate their body temperatures. Just as animals use their layers of fat, fur, and thick skin to keep them warm in the wintertime, they use the fragile skin of their ears to release heat.

As blood travels throughout animal bodies, it carries a remarkable amount of heat. When that blood moves through the animal’s large, thin-skinned ears, it gets as close to the outside world as it can, allowing all that trapped heat to dissipate incredibly fast before it circulates back through the body more relaxed than before.

  • Shedding Those Layers

Wouldn’t it be awful to wear a heavy, fur-lined winter coat all summer? That’s precisely what most animals have to deal with, but some lucky ones can shed all that unnecessary fur that traps heat. As soon as springtime hits and the temperatures begin to rise, animals like deer, bison, and rabbits have a hormone surge that results in them losing all of that unnecessary heavy fur so their skin can breathe far more quickly.

  • Breaking a Sweat

Just as human animals have sweat glands, some can sweat off their heat stores. Horses are excellent sweaters, and so are hippopotamuses, who sweat a reddish substance that removes trapped heat and acts as a natural sunscreen. But cats big and small, including lions, tigers, leopards, and Mr Kitty on your lap, have only a few sweat glands, and they are in a surprising place – their paws. Felines sweat through the pads on the bottom of their feet, and they use that sweat to mark their territory (which is what Mr Kitty is doing when he kneads you with his paws). When do you require heating and cooling Mesa AZ? For the best HVAC solution, contact Sharp Air Conditioning & Heating.

  • Pant It Out

You’ve seen your dog pant furiously after a good long run in the park, but plenty of other animals release built-up internal heat through their tongues. Did you know that birds pant too? When you see a bird hopping around in your backyard with its mouth open, it is their form of panting using a very elaborate air-sac-and-lung combination that helps them ditch the heat in their bodies.

  • Aestivation: A Hole for One

Just like bears and other animals hibernate to avoid the harsh winter months, animals like frogs, snails, and some ground squirrels take to digging holes in the ground, creating incredible, comfortable retreats that allow them to escape the sun. These animals can stay in their burrows and live off their stored body fats for quite some time, usually long enough for the hottest months to pass and the rainy season to begin. Aestivation is especially important for desert dwellers, so you’ll likely find lots of caves and holes in the ground outside your door.

  • Water It Down

Like you like to dip in your pool when it gets too hot, animals love to roll around in puddles, lakes, and swamps of the wet stuff to cool themselves off. You’ve undoubtedly seen videos of uninvited bears making themselves home in backyard pools, and they aren’t the only ones. Birds are happy to splash around in bird baths and puddles, and elephant herds will hit the water holes and cool themselves off.

When you are not comfortable with beating the heat in an animal style, then you can contact Sharp Air Conditioning & Heating, LLC AC repair Gilbert.

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