King Penguin Chicks during the Austral Winter at Possession Island, Crozet Archipelago (IMAGE)
Caption
Fasting in the cold represents a bioenergetics trade-off between sparing energy for body maintenance and dissipating energy for heat production and endothermy maintenance. In this challenging context, chicks develop a whole range of energy sparing mechanisms (social huddling behavior, reduction in muscle activity and basal metabolic rate, short period of hypothermia and high thermal insulation) that lead to reduce the energy allocated to heat production and growth.
Credit
Pierre-Axel Monternier
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