How animals escape the heat in summer

Dogs stick out their tongues, cats choose to lie on the ground or under a tree, squirrels raise their tails to shade, rabbits’ ears dissipate heat, bees fan their wings, rhinos roll in the mud, and elephants have trunks Dissipate heat and cool down the blood flowing to the brain

The chicken opens its mouth and stretches its wings to help dissipate heat, and the hippopotamus is in the water

Additional: The rainy season is about to go but will remain, and "water and fire" are intertwined in recent days. , as soon as you step out of the house, the hot and humid air waves instantly wrap you tightly. At this time, the cool breeze from the air conditioner has become people's favorite. And how do animals in the wild spend the summer? Let's go to Shanghai Wildlife Park and have a look.

Although it is during the summer vacation, the staff told reporters that it is the off-season for tourism, and there is only one reason - the heat. Entering the park, the flamingos facing the gate come from hot Africa. They don't seem to care about the temperature. They still walk gracefully to hunt for food and carefully hatch and nurse their babies. In contrast, the square pigeons next to them have lost their former heroic appearance of circling and flying. They are just hanging their heads on the lawn, looking a little wilted. All kinds of small animals such as peacocks that you can meet on the road are gone. The slightly empty road is glowing white under the scorching sun.

In the beast area, the area of ??tigers, bears, and lions under the scorching sun seems a bit mysterious and quiet. These ferocious animals don’t know where they are hiding in the grass or under the shade of the trees. Only when the car approaches, you will see them. Only then can we see their looming "true appearance and tiger body". The Lion King took his wife, concubines, children, and his family to hide in the bushes to enjoy the cool air. The family lay horizontally and vertically with their eyes half closed, a little listless.

In the tiger area, tourists were preparing to "sacrifice" a live chicken. Facing this most delicious delicacy, the two tigers actually remained calm. When the tour bus approached, one tiger The tiger reluctantly left the wooden shed that was shaded by the sun, walked around in tiger steps, and slowly "took down" the live chicken that was unable to struggle.

Black bears and brown bears may be clumsy in appearance, but they are extremely energetic when playing with water, and they often have "water fights" for fun. The short sun bear usually hides in the bushes, but when it sees the tour bus coming, it rushes up to it and begs for a drink. Throw a bottle of Coke to it, and it will sit on the floor, hold the bottle with its two front paws, bite open the bottle cap skillfully, raise its head and drink it all.

The white lions, white tigers, chimpanzees and mandrills who had just arrived at the wildlife park found shelter from the scorching sun to rest, and even took a nice nap at noon. However, visitors who come to visit have to work hard. After looking at the White Tiger Pavilion for a long time, a child said to himself: "The grass here is nothing special!" It turned out that the white tiger was sleeping in the grass in the corner. The children couldn't see it and thought that what was on display here was the grass in front of them.

On hot days, veterinarians are also very busy. They have to visit each animal's home every day. If there are serious illnesses, they have to be admitted to the veterinary hospital and given saline water for hospitalization. In order to provide sufficient cooling ice, the ice machine in the animal kitchen cold storage is operating at full capacity day and night. Three tons of ice per day are still in short supply, and two to three tons need to be purchased from the ice factory to meet the day's demand.

The breeders prepared "cold drinks" for various animals - 200 kilograms of frozen watermelon, 200 kilograms of apples, 80 kilograms of bananas, tomatoes, cucumbers, etc. For these cold and hard things, they are all fighting for each other, and they can't put it down. But all of a sudden I couldn't chew it, so I could only hold it in my "hand". But because it's too cold, I can't hold it all the time. I pick it up and throw it away. After it slowly melts, I can enjoy it slowly one bite at a time. It's really an "addiction" to cold.

Shower method

No matter how you avoid the heat, taking a shower is the simplest and most practical way.

The power of a whale is equivalent to 60 horsepower. If it swims at a speed of 36 kilometers per hour, its body temperature will rise by 1 degree every 5 minutes. In this way, your body temperature will be nearly 40 times higher than before after about 3 hours of swimming. When a whale feels hot, it dilates its arteries through its layer of fat. It also rinses the mouth and nose with cold water, then sprays out hot water to create a beautiful fountain for cooling.

At noon in midsummer, elephants like to roll in the water and "shower" by spraying water upwards from their trunks to lower their body temperature. At the same time, elephants will flap their big ears vigorously to dissipate heat into the air.

Walruses are like elephants in the sea, with huge bodies and thick, wrinkled skin. The weight of adult walruses can reach thousands of kilograms. They are natural divers and can dive hundreds of meters deep, but once they swim to the beach, they completely lose their ability to fight. Every time it crawls, it stops to take a few deep breaths. Therefore, its method of avoiding the heat is relatively simple. Instead of taking a shower with water, it uses sand. Just lie down directly on the beach and keep pushing the wet sand over your body to absorb heat and cool down.

Buffalo Buffalo is naturally a cow soaked in water. Because buffalo have thick skin and few sweat glands, they cannot easily dissipate heat, so they like water very much. In summer, it will immerse its body in water to help dissipate heat, or roll in the mud and then rinse in the water.

Aestivation Method

You must know what hibernation is, but did you know that there is also aestivation?

There are more than 1,100 recorded species of sea cucumbers in the world. They have different shapes and personalities, but their methods of repelling the heat are similar. If the water temperature is too high, the protein in the sea cucumber will be denatured, causing death. At this time, the sea cucumber will curl up and lie in the shallow sea, unable to eat, relying entirely on consuming the fat accumulated in the body to maintain life activities, and will not wake up until the cool autumn.

There is a kind of lungfish that lives in the shallow waters of Africa. In order to survive the hot weather safely, it makes preparations to escape the heat before summer comes. They choose muddy sea areas to drill into the bottom layer, secrete mucus on their own, stick the soil around the bottom layer together, and carefully build small nests as a comfortable nest to escape the heat and cool down. After the summer vacation is over, they are willing to go out to swim in their favorite waters and live a normal ocean life.

Whenever midsummer comes, the snail in the African desert retracts into its hard shell, burrows into a hole in the gravel, and hides to sleep. When the weather gets cooler, they crawl out from the gravel and move around. In South Africa, there is a strange tree fish that can climb trees. In summer, it will climb to the shade of a tree and sleep for more than two months to survive the hot summer.

We really arrive at the same destination through different paths, just to feel the coolness of autumn.

Self-rescue methods

Some animals cannot afford to soak in the water all day long and are unwilling to aestiate. What should we do? They have their own unique way to escape the heat.

Camels living in the desert, in order to resist the high temperature and dry heat of the outside world, raise their body temperature to exceed the outside temperature. Doing so will prevent you from sweating and reduce evaporation of water in your body. At night, its body temperature will drop again as the outside temperature changes. When the body temperature is too high in summer, the butterfly will turn its wings and use its furry scales to reflect sunlight to cool down.

In order to reduce the area exposed to sunlight, the Australian kangaroo adopts a hunched approach. When the temperature reaches 35℃-40℃, it will constantly lick its front paws with its tongue, thus Reduce body temperature quickly. Similar to the method of kangaroos, after the bat returns from foraging for a full meal, it performs an "upside down fuchsia" as soon as it returns to its habitat. At this time, its body temperature can drop to about 15°C.

Seahorses that grow in the ocean neither dive into deep water nor go to places with a lot of seaweed to cool off when they feel hot. Instead, they stretch their limbs motionless. People who don’t know the inside story think it is a seahorse. I'm sunbathing. It turns out that the seahorse's skin glands can secrete a red mucus. After the mucus dries, it acts like a sun visor. The seahorse uses it to protect sensitive skin from sun exposure.

In order to prevent the hot weather from affecting their normal life, crocodiles will swim in groups near the shore and stay there for a long time to escape the heat. They open their big mouths very cleverly and exhale in and out. Through this rapid and rhythmic wonderful movement, they can smoothly discharge the hot air from their bodies, seeking natural coolness and happiness. Have an unbearably hot summer.

It really fits the saying: You don’t know if you can’t see, the world is really wonderful.

Aren’t the various ways animals use to escape the heat more interesting than us hiding in our rooms all day long and blowing on the air conditioner?