Why do elephants walk so slowly? Science finds the answer

by time news

2023-04-18 20:51:22

An animal’s ability to travel is a crucial part of its survival: it dictates where and how far it can migrate, find food, mates, and expand into new territories. This fact becomes even more complicated in a world dominated by humans, causing increasingly fragmented habitats, where food and water are increasingly limited due to climate change. Now, a study led by the researcher Alexander Dyer, from the German Center for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv), and the Friedrich Schiller University Jena (Germany) reveals that the speed of the trip, regardless of whether the animal flies, runs or swim is limited by how effectively you remove the excess heat generated in your muscles. The conclusions have just been published in the journal ‘PLOS Biology’.

Dyer and his colleagues developed a model to look at the relationship between animal size and movement speed, using data from 532 species. While larger animals, such as elephants, should be able to travel faster due to longer wings, legs or tails, the researchers found that medium-sized animals, such as wolves, tend to have the fastest sustained speeds.

The researchers attribute this to larger animals taking longer to dissipate the heat produced by their muscles as they move, and therefore must travel more slowly to avoid overheating. They conclude that the speed of movement of any animal can be explained by considering together the efficiency with which it uses energy and expels heat.

“The new study provides a way to understand the movement capabilities of animals between species and can be used to estimate the speed of movement of any animal based on its size,” Dyer explains. “For example, this approach can be applied to predict whether an animal might move between habitats fragmented by human development, even when the details of its biology are unknown.”

Another of the authors, Myriam Hirt of iDiv and the University of Jena, adds: “We anticipate that large animals are potentially more susceptible to the effects of habitat fragmentation in a warm climate than previously thought, and therefore , more prone to extinction. But this part requires further investigation.”


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