• pjwestin@lemmy.worldEnglish
    5·
    2 days ago

    Snake: “Uh, Linda, you know that as an ectotherm…(ah, fuck it, she put a lot of effort into this)…Thank you, I love it!”

    • MutantTailThing@lemmy.worldEnglish
      17·
      4 days ago

      Exactly. Compare that to how humans wear sweaters. We go in one hole and come out three. That is some grade A bullshit.

    • kerrigan778@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      22·
      4 days ago

      For the record, cold blooded animals also produce heat as a byproduct of respiration and exertion, they just don’t self regulate their temperature like warm blooded animals and as a result generally produce much less body heat.

      They are also just as vulnerable to losing body heat if the room is cold. They don’t “run warm” but they bask to raise their body temperature and lose that body heat to the air and the ground as they go about their day if their energy level is insufficient to make up for losses to the air. If snakes were comfortable being the same temperature as the air they wouldn’t need to bask in the light.

    • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      17·
      4 days ago

      I’m no dendrologist, but:

      BECAUSE cold blooded: it means that they need external heat sources or food to raise their body temperature rather than producing their own heat like mammals and the like do.

      Wearing a sweater is basically the equivalent of basking on a rock somewhere sunny as I understand it

      • anon6789@lemmy.worldEnglish
        12·
        4 days ago

        I don’t think the food raises their temperature, though I’m no expert in this either. Warm blooded animals use a portion of our metabolism to maintain body temperature (endothermic) while cold blooded animals (exothermic) have to get most of their heat from outside sources. This is why they bask in the sun and look so happy.

        They need heat the same reason we do, to allow our bodily functions to operate as our organs expect them to. Things like metabolism slow or cease when required temps can’t be maintained.

        When I was on the airboat gator tour in Florida, the guy was saying the gators sort of ferment their food to help break it down, so they need that heat (73F, I just googled) as a minimum to actually digest. He said otherwise food can end up rotting in the stomach and they can get sepsis and die.

        While we have to eat and metabolize more to maintain our core temp, but that lets us go into hotter or cooler climates and have a chance to keep surviving as long as our bodies can balance out our temp by burning calories and sweating.

        Other than lower required caloric intake, I can’t think of any advantages of being cold blooded.

        • kerrigan778@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
          15·
          4 days ago

          It is a SHOCKINGLY lower caloric intake is why. Like TEN TIMES. Warm blooded animals are always ready to go but we have to eat continuously to maintain that. Meanwhile snakes eat once a week to once a month despite growing throughout their lives.

          • anon6789@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            3 days ago

            Very true, and a huge beneft! Many times the sun or a burrow can be a lot more reliable than finding a meal.

            And there are some cool warm blooded animals that try to have some of the best of both worlds by hibernating or by going into torpor.

      • AndyMFK@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        4·
        4 days ago

        But this only works for warm blooded animals. We produce heat, it gets trapped because of our clothing and keeps us warmer.

        That woollen sock thing is the same temperature as the room, and the same temperature as the snake. Unless you maybe put it in the microwave first to warm it up slightly (the sock, not the snake).

        If that sock isn’t pre heated, it’s doing nothing to warm the snake because there no heat to trap as I understand it

        • anon6789@lemmy.worldEnglish
          8·
          4 days ago

          I imagine snake is coming from its terrarium with a heat lamp so it is currently storing that lamp’s heat in its body. If the room’s temp is lower, snake will lose that stored heat to the air, but by adding an insulator around it, that heat will radiate much more slowly, no?

          Like when the food delivery person puts the hot food in that insulated bag, the food isn’t generating new heat, but the bag is keeping that stored heat from dissipating as quickly as it would otherwise.

        • Crackhappy@lemmy.worldEnglish
          3·
          3 days ago

          Ok. Cold blooded doesn’t mean their blood is actually cold. It just means they can’t produce excess heat to regulate temperature. They do still produce heat, so a sweater is quite useful.

        • LaLuzDelSol@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2·
          3 days ago

          All animals produce heat via their metabolism. If you were to look at a snake with a FLIR camera it would be slightly warmer than the room. If you Google “FLIR camera snake” you will see exactly that.

    • buddascrayon@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      2 days ago

      Do you really think someone would manage to get a snake into that thing if the snake didn’t want to go in?

      They probably think it’s a nice hole to hide in. And if OP threw the thing in the dryer for a couple of minutes to warm it up, the snake is probably pretty comfy in there.

    • axx@slrpnk.netEnglish
      1·
      3 days ago

      I mean, we don’t actually know that, we’d need to test that. I think it’s testable, in an ethical way. I would tend to agree with you on principle, but in this case it’s not as straightforward.

  • Ephera@lemmy.mlEnglish
    14·
    4 days ago

    Hmm, can she still crawl in that? Looks like it would kill friction quite a bit…