The penguins don't freeze
In our country snow and ice are an occasional matter in winter, but our next guests often find snow and ice. We're talking about penguins. Have you ever thought that even if you spend the day on ice, your legs and your body will not freeze? Let's see why.
Penguins can control the flow of blood to the legs by narrowing or widening the artery that runs down the thigh, depending on the temperature. In this way, and with the abundant fat under the skin, the penguins can prevent the legs from freezing. They are kept very cold, at about 5 degrees, but not frozen.
However, not freezing the legs is only half of the penguin problem. In fact, if the blood from the legs returned to the body in 5 degrees, gradually, the body itself would cool down from the bottom upwards. To avoid this, the veins of the legs are highly branched, and in addition, the veins that carry hot blood from top to bottom and those that carry cold blood from bottom to top are opposed to each other. As a result, the cold blood flowing from the bottom upwards is heated by the action of the hot blood coming from the body. This
is how they manage to keep the penguin warm enough so that the legs do not freeze and, at the same time, the cold blood from the legs does not cool the body.
In addition, penguins have a higher body temperature than most mammals, around 40 degrees. To keep this heat inside, they have a lot of fat under the skin and a firm and closed plumage on the skin.
Buletina
Bidali zure helbide elektronikoa eta jaso asteroko buletina zure sarrera-ontzian
Teknopolis
