Names: _____________________________________

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.
- Kangaroos lick saliva onto their forearms and body where the blood vessels are. As the saliva evaporates,
the kangaroos’ body temperature cools down.
- Kangaroos dig at the top soil on the ground to get rid of the warm soil and get to the cool soil. This way they
can lay down on the cool soil without increasing their body temperature.

2. Give two examples of physiological adaptations animals could use to keep cool.
- Vultures pee on their feet to cool their body temperature.
- Vultures don’t have feathers on their head. It helps them thermoregulate so they can cool off from their
head.

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.
- Evaporative cooling is based on water’s high heat of vaporization. The evaporative loss of the most energetic
water molecules cools the surface. Heat is absorbed when hydrogen bonds break and is released when
hydrogen bonds form. This keeps temperatures relatively steady which permits life.

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).
- 48-50 degrees Celsius
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.
a. Sweating: When grasshoppers
experience the evaporation from the
surface of their bodies it will lower its
body temperature.
b. Panting: The grasshoppers could
increase ventilation rate, which 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 appears to be most likely related to the increase amount of water evaporation
because the graphs are almost identical.

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?
- In grasshoppers with a body temperature of around 48-50 degrees Celsius, the ventilation rate, heart rate,
and evaporative water loss increases. The air temperature and body temperature become closer together.
-

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 sweat because as the body
temperature increased and reached 48-50 degrees C,
the ventilation rate, heartrate, and evaporative water
loss increased tremendously. We can see that this
evaporative cooling process occurs when their body
temperature heats up to certain degree.

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)?
- A lesser amount of heat will be drawn up from the mass to be cooled per unit mole of the new liquid
vaporized, compared to the amount of heat that will be drawn by vaporizing a unit mole of water. For the
case of methane, five mole of methane needs to be vaporized to get the same cooling effect of a mole of
water.