Iron and Fever

Warm-blooded animals have an elaborate physiological control system to maintain a constant body temperature. In man, this temperature is about 37°C. Any significant deviation from this temperature puts stress on the body and makes it difficult to maintain metabolic processes at their normal rates. Why then, during sickness, should the temperature rise? It would seem that development of fever would cause things to go from bad to worse, and make it more difficult for the body to recuperate. Fe...

 Warm-Blooded Plants: Zero-g, Zero-T, and Zero-P

There are three principal obstacles to be overcome in adapting a terrestrial species to life in space. It must learn to live and be happy in zero-g, zero-T, and zero-P, that is to say, zero-gravity, zero-temperature, and zero-pressure. Of these, zero-g is probably the easiest to cope with, although we are still ignorant of the nature of the physiological hazards which it imposes. To deal with zero-T is simple in principle although it may be complicated and awkward in practice. Fur and feather...

 Dyson Tree

Many species of terrestrial plants, including the skunk cabbage that sprouts in February in the woods of Princeton, New Jersey, where I live, are warm-blooded to a limited extent. For about two weeks the skunk cabbage maintains a warm temperature by rapidly metabolizing starch stored inside the part of its anatomy known as the spadix, which contains the hidden flowers with their male and female structures. According to folklore, the spadix is warm enough to melt snow around it. The evolutiona...

 The Beginnings of the Theory of Evolution

From thus meditating on the great similarity of the structure of the warm-blooded animals, and at the same time of the great changes they undergo both before and after their nativity; and by considering in how minute a portion of time many of the changes of animals above described have been produced; would it be too bold to imagine that, in the great length of time since the earth began to exist, perhaps millions of ages before the commencement of the history of mankind would it be too bold t...