Names: _Rutu Patel___________________

Do Grasshoppers Sweat?

Part I – How Animals Stay Cool

1. Give two examples of behavioral adaptations animals could use to keep cool under heat stress.
One example of behavioral adaptation is digging into the ground where it is more cooler and then coming
back up when the extreme has gone away at night, coyotes are known to do this in the deserts. Another
example is how kangaroos lick their forearm , where blood vessels are close to the surface of the skin, and
when the saliva evaporates, their blood is then cooled.

2. Give two examples of physiological adaptations animals could use to keep cool.

One example of a physiological adaptation an animal can use to keep cool is. Another adaptation is how animals cool
under heat stress is by sweating where water secretes from the skin.

Part II – A Little Background

3. Evaporative cooling, like many biological adaptations, is an emergent property stemming from the basic
chemical properties of molecules. Explain some properties of water that allow for evaporative cooling to take
place.

Water has a high point at which it evaporates, 100C or 212F. When the water reaches this temperature, then the
molecules with kinetic energy will escape as a gas, while the ones with less kinetic energy remain as a liquid. This will
include the property, high specific heat.

4. Evaporative cooling is a product of evolution that has evolved in some organisms for use under certain
environmental conditions. Circle the organisms or conditions below that you think are most likely to use
evaporative cooling.

5. From the data acquired in Prange’s experiment (Figure 2), determine the temperature that leads to a significant
difference between body temperature and air temperature (i.e., greater than about 2 °C difference).

Greater than or about -6 degrees C

 6. As Dr. Prange suggested, the
grasshoppers appear to be using some
other cooling mechanism(s) besides
behavior. Give two examples of cooling
mechanisms that grasshoppers in the
study might be using.

The water on the insect can evaporate and lower the grasshopper’s body temperature, and the grasshoppers’
breathing rate increases and so it increases the evaporation of water.

7. From the graphs in Figure 4, does the increase in ventilation rate appear to be most likely related to an increase
in metabolic need (heart rate), or an increase in the amount of water evaporation? Explain your reasoning.

The increase in ventilation rate appears to be directly related to an increase in heart rate. My reasoning for this comes
from the fact that the graphs of heart rate vs body temp and evaporative water loss vs body temp are almost
identical. As the body temperature goes up, so does the heart rate and the evaporative water loss.

8. Compare the graphs in Figure 4 to the graph in Figure 2. What appears to happen to grasshoppers at a
temperature of around 48–50 degrees?
Around 48-50 degrees, the difference between air temperature and body temperature starts to decrease.
Also, at a body temp of 48-50, the ventilation rate, heart rate, and evaporative water loss all increase.

9. From Dr. Prange’s study, can it be supported that the

grasshoppers were using evaporative cooling? In other
words, do grasshoppers sweat? Why or why not?
Yes, grasshoppers were using evaporative cooling. This is
because as body temperature increased to around 48-50
degrees, the heart rate, evaporative water, and
ventilation all increased. So, evaporative cooling
happened around 48-50 degrees.
10. Water has an unusually high heat of vaporization (~40kJ/mol), allowing it to be used for evaporative cooling.
What do you think would happen if a different compound was used for evaporative cooling—for example,
methane (~8kJ/mol)? If a different compound was used like methane, then there wouldn’t be as high of a heat
of vaporization compared to water.