The relation of metabolism to the development of temperature regulation in birds

✍ Scribed by Kendeigh, S. Charles

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1939
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 953 KB
• Volume: 82
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0022-104X
• DOI: 10.1002/jez.1400820306

✦ Synopsis

An early student of the development of temperature control in birds was W. F. Edwards who, in 1824, divided the young into two groups, those with (precocial) and those without (altricial) temperature regulation at hatching (Pembrey, 1895). Toward the end of the nineteenth centurF, Pembrey, Gordan and Warren (l8M-1895) measured the carbon dioxide output of the developing embryo of the domestic fowl, a precocial form. From the eleventh to the eiglitecnth clav of incubation, the embryo decreased its respiratory output with fall in air temperature like a cold-blooded (poikilothermic) animal; but from the nineteenth to the twenty-first day, the carbon dioxide output with drop in air temperature remained nearly coiistarit in amount, evidently a transitory intermcdiate condition, since on the first day after hatching the gaseous output increased with fall in air temperature as in warmblooded (homoiothcrmic) animals. In 1895, Pembrey reported a comparable study on clerelopment of temperature regulation in the pigeon, an altricial species, in which he found that heat production, as iiidicated by carbon dioxide output, decreased with a drop in air temperature up to about the seventh day after hatching. During the eiglitli or ninth day,