Cold-blooded

Cold-blooded is a common term used to describe organisms that maintain their body temperatures in ways different from mammals and birds. The term is now archaic in scientific contexts. Cold-blooded creatures were, initially, presumed to be incapable of maintaining their body temperatures at all. They were presumed to be "slaves" to their environments. Whatever the environmental temperature was, so too was their body temp.

Related Topics:
Mammals - Birds

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Since that time, advances in the study of how creatures maintain their internal temperatures (deemed: thermophysiology), have shown that many of the preconceived notions of what warm blooded and cold blooded mean, were far from accurate. Today scientists realize that body temperature types are not a simple matter of black and white. Most creatures fit more in line with a graded spectrum from one extreme (cold blooded) to another (warm blooded). Because of this, both of these terms have since fallen out of favour. They have been generally replaced with one or more of their variants (see below: Breaking down Cold-Bloodedness)

Related Topics:
Warm blooded - Breaking down Cold-Bloodedness

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~