How do we differentiate warm blooded and cold blooded animals?
Physiologists do not use these terms. They use terms like ectotherm, or animals that rely on outside sources of heat (like the sun) to generate body heat, and endotherm, or animals that generate heat internally. That is because even though reptiles are ectotherms, some of them (e.g. the desert iguana) can tolerate body temperatures that could give endotherms like humans a dangerously high, life threatening fever. Therefore, if we just measure body temperature, we may be forced to conclude that the desert iguana is warm-blooded animal and that humans are cold blooded. LOL Obviously, despite the high body temperature of the desert iguana, their body temperature does drop at night, when the sun no longer shines and the desert can turn cold. If so, can we then call the desert iguana a cold-blooded animal anyway? Again, no, because many mammals hibernate. When they hibernate, their body temperature is only a few degrees above freezing. So, the terms warm and cold blooded cannot be used to d
