Episode 179 - Thermoregulation

The Common Descent Podcast

If things get too hot or too cold, the crucial processes inside the cells and tissues of living organisms stop working properly, and that’s bad. So, organisms expend a lot of time and energy managing their body temperatures. This episode, we break down the familiar concepts of “warm-blooded” and “cold-blooded,” we discuss the many adaptations that animals use to manage the heat, we explore what evidence allows us to interpret thermoregulatory strategies in the fossil record, and we investigate what is known about how these strategies have evolved over time.

In the news: soft robot echinoderms, bird tracks, taste evolution, and dinosaur eggs.

Time markers:
Intro & Announcements: 00:00:00
News: 00:04:45
Main discussion, Part 1: 00:36:00
Main discussion, Part 2: 01:20:30
Patron question: 1:59:00

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The Intro and Outro music is “On the Origin of Species” by Protodome.
More music like this at http://ocremix.org.

Musical Interludes are "Professor Umlaut" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/