Quote:
Originally Posted by Pirarucu
I have it here:
"A humane version of the same experiment demonstrates that on a sunny morning an 11g juvenile increased body temperature by 1.7C in a minute, whilst a 400g adult heated at only 0.2C per minute. Furthermore juvenile lizards heat up as if they were inert objects but adults are able to maintain steady body temperatures of around 38C for much longer periods. This means that when juveniles reach their maximum preferred body temperature they must retreat to a cooler spot within two minutes, whilst adults can remain active in full sun for a further half an hour. This greatly increases the animal's foraging options in hot weather, but because it takes the lizards much longer to heat up they are unable to make much use of short sunny spells during cloudy weather. As a result juveniles can be active on any day when there are breaks in the cloud, but adults must remain inactive unless more substantial sunny periods are available."
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It sounds like Formica misqouted then when he said that they required 40-50 minutes in the wild, and we only recommend 15 min basking in captivity. I'm still interested in the 'how' these adults maintain 38c since the babies are physiologically the same. It seems more like the adults are increasing just like neonates, but since they have larger body mass, it simply takes longer and they don't actually DO any regulative process to keep cool....
Edit: Sorry, I just saw that piracucu basically said what I just did earlier.
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