Penguins and Heat Loss Investigation

This essay hasn't yet been marked by one of our teachers

You can view 40 essays on Patterns of Behaviour that have been Marked by Teachers

The first 200 words of this essay...

Plan

Background knowledge

Penguins, like all other animals, have special adaptions to help them survive in their climate. For example their 'wings' are used to help them swim and their webbed feet are used for swimming too. Also, their colouring helps them and they become less visible in the water.

However, this assignment is not about their colouring or how they are able to swim, instead we look at how the penguins are distributed throughout the Southern hemisphere. The larger Emperor penguins are found nearest the South Pole while the smallest species, the jackass penguins are found nearer the warm equator.

Penguins like all other birds and mammals are homeothermic, which means they are able to maintain a constant body temperature therefore when penguins lose heat they must replace it. This means a certain amount of heat is produced to replace the heat that was lost.

Heat is produced in the body by chemical reactions. These chemical reactions take placed in living cells. So, the more cells the animals has the larger the amount of heat it can produce. Therefore the amount of heat energy depends on the size of the animal and in this