Why animals with a constant body temparature such as mammals and birds require more food than do animals with a changing body temparature such as reptiles and fish ?
Answers
Explanation:
With a few exceptions, all mammals and birds are warm-blooded, and all reptiles, insects, arachnids, amphibians and fish are cold-blooded. What does it mean to be warm-blooded or cold-blooded? The temperature of an animal's blood is related to its body temperature.
Warm-Blooded vs. Cold-Blooded
Warm-blooded creatures, like mammals and birds, try to keep the inside of their bodies at a constant temperature. They do this by generating their own heat when they are in a cooler environment, and by cooling themselves when they are in a hotter environment. To generate heat, warm-blooded animals convert the food that they eat into energy. They have to eat a lot of food, compared with cold-blooded animals, to maintain a constant body temperature. Only a small amount of the food that a warm-blooded animal eats is converted into body mass. The rest is used to fuel a constant body temperature.