Elephant ears serve as thermo-regulators
How do large mammals cool off? It’s the central question driving research done by U of G faculty from the Department of Animal and Poultry Science. This past week their work was featured on the BBC Nature website.
Esther Finegan is leading the research, which involves large mammal heat regulation. A two-time Guelph graduate herself, Finegan and her team of grad students have been studying animals at the Toronto Zoo for the past six years. They are interested in thermoregulation, the process through which animals maintain a steady body temperature.
Although beating the heat might be a problem few Guelph students can relate to this time of the year, we’ve all been there at some time or another. It turns out that the problem of keeping it cool gets exponentially more difficult the more body mass you have. As you scale an animal up, it tends to have more mass in relation to its surface area. For larger animals that Finegan and her students research, like the elephants, rhinos, zebras, hippos and giraffes, it can be a real challenge to overcome the stress of the heat.
As always, evolution has an answer. For the African Elephants, it comes in the form of their massive ears. Despite what Disney movies might have you believe, elephants ears are much more important for cooling off than for taking off. Their closely related relatives the Asian Elephants have smaller ears, and instead use their trunks to cool off. For other animals like the zebra, evolution evidently favored a more stylistic approach to staying cool, giving them snazzy white stripes to help reflect heat.
Finegan hopes to learn more about Asian Elephants this spring. Along with her students she’ll spend a month studying the elephants in 30-hour shifts. Using thermal-imaging cameras, they’ll be able to monitor the elephant’s body heat throughout the day. This kind of research is important for designing habitats, especially in places completely foreign to the animals like the Toronto Zoo.
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