What advantages does being warm blooded have over being cold blooded. if any?

Question

What advantages does being warm blooded have over being cold blooded. if any?

Answer 1

Advantages of a fast metabolism

The overall speed of an animal's metabolism increases by a factor of about 2 for every 10 C° rise in temperature (limited by the need to avoid hyperthermia). Warm-bloodedness does not provide greater speed than cold-bloodedness - cold-blooded animals can move as fast as warm-blooded animals of the same size and build. But warm-blooded animals have much greater stamina than cold-blooded creatures of the same size and build, because their faster metabolisms quickly regenerate energy supplies (especially ATP) and break down muscular waste products (especially lactate). This enables warm-blooded predators to run down cold-blooded prey, warm-blooded prey to outrun cold-blooded predators (provided they avoid the initial charge or ambush) and warm-blooded animals to be much more successful foragers.

Advantages of homeothermy

Enzymes have strong temperature preferences and their efficiency is much reduced outside their preferred ranges. A creature with a fairly constant body temperature can therefore use enzymes which are efficient at that temperature. Another advantage of a homeothermic animal would be its ability to maintain its constant body temperature even in freezing cold weather. A poikilotherm must either operate well below optimum efficiency most of the time or spend extra resources making a wider range of enzymes to cover the wider range of body temperatures.

Disadvantages of warm-bloodedness

Because warm-blooded animals use enzymes which are specialised for a narrow range of body temperatures over-cooling rapidly leads to torpor and then death. Also, the energy required to maintain the homeothermic temperature comes from food - this results in homeothermic animals needing to eat much more food than poikilothermic animals.

Thermographic image: a coldblooded snake is eating a warmblooded mouse

Thermographic image: a coldblooded snake is eating a warmblooded mouse

Shivering and fat-burning to maintain temperature are very energy-intensive, for example:

    * in winter many small birds lose one third of their body weight overnight.

    * in general a warm-blooded animal requires 5 to 10 times as much food as a cold-blooded animal of the same size and build, so cold-blooded animals are better at surviving famines and barren environments.

Answer 2

A warm blooded organism can live pretty well any place on earth because it maintains a steady, internal temperature.  A cold blooded organism's body temperature fluctuates with the environment temperature.  (example:  in the morning a smake must find a warm rock or other place to heat up it's inside temperature before it has the energy to go hunting.)  Most cold blooded organisms hibernate in the winter because the temperature is really too cold for survival.

Answer 3

Warm blooded -human . Cold blooded-politician .