Animals lose heat through the surface areas of their skin. A small animal, such as a mouse, uses a much larger proportion of its energy to keep warm than does a large animal, such as an elephant. Why is the rate of heat loss per unit area greater in a small animal than a large one

Question

Biology

Tom

31 March, 00:58

Animals lose heat through the surface areas of their skin. A small animal, such as a mouse, uses a much larger proportion of its energy to keep warm than does a large animal, such as an elephant. Why is the rate of heat loss per unit area greater in a small animal than a large one

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Answers (2)

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Isabela Glenn · Answer 1

because mouse (small animal) has large surface area to volume ratio compare to Elephants. (large animal).

Explanation:

Generally the larger the body volume of an organism, the higher the amount of internal heat generated, however the larger the mass of the organism, the lower the surface area available to dissipate the generated heat.

Thus the greater the surface area to volume ratio available to an organism in its environment, the larger the quantity of internal heat to be dissipated in proportion to its volume.

Development in larger mass animals increases the body volume cavity faster than the surface area, thus large animals have low surface area to volume ratio. Thus little surface area is available to dissipate heat to the surroundings. The rate of increase in body volume in smaller animals is lower than the surface areas. Therefore small animals has large surface areas to volume ratio, thus they lose large amount of heat due to larger surface area available for heat dissipation.

Thus mouse with smaller mass, but high surface areas to volume ratio lose more heat than Elephant of larger body but with low surface area-volume ratio,.

Lee Wilkerson · Answer 2

Because of the difference in surface area to volume ratio

Explanation:

Surface are to volume ratio is the area of an object that is exposed to the external environment (surface area), compared to the amount within an object (volume).

Therefore an elephant has a lower surface area to volume ratio than a mouse.

The smaller an object is the greater its surface area to volume ratio.

Small animals have much more surface area per mass than large animals. With so much surface area, they lose heat very quickly. So, a mouse, with a lot of surface area per mass, must spend a lot more energy to stay warm than a large animal.