Glossary of Terms
Altricial: Birth or hatching in helpless condition, requiring parental care.
Arboreal: Primarily tree dwelling.
Carrion: Dead and decaying flesh.
Crepuscular: Becoming active at twilight or before sunrise.
Diurnal: Active during the day.
Estivate: To pass the summer in a dormant or torpid state.
Estrus: The periodic state of sexual excitement in the female of most mammals, excluding human beings, that immediately precedes ovulation and during which the female is most receptive to mating; heat.
Fledged: A young bird that has grown it's first set of flight feathers, which enables it to fly from the nest.
Kopje: Rock outcroppings used by animals for observation, habitat and shelter in Africa.
Molt: Periodic shedding of outer skin in reptiles or feathers in birds, which are then replaced by new growth.
New World: The Western hemisphere; specifically the continents of North and South America.
Prehensile: Adapted for grasping or seizing, such as a monkey's tail or a black rhino's lip.
Ocellus: A marking that resembles an eye, as on the tail feathers of a male peacock.
Old World: The Eastern hemisphere; Australia, Africa, Eurasia and associated lands.
Ruminant: Any of various hoofed, even-toed, usually horned mammals such as sheep, goats, deer, and giraffes, characteristically having a stomach divided into four compartments and chewing a cud consisting of regurgitated, partially digested food.
Scute: A large horny plate or scale such as that found on a turtle's shell.
Thermoregulation: Various physiological responses to controlling body temperature. See the following examples.
Ectothermic: Having the body temperature determined primarily by an animal's behavior in response to temperature of the environment. Example: amphibians, reptiles.
Endothermic: Body temperature controlled from within the body. Example: Birds and mammals. Maintaining a constant body temperature during stressful periods is such a metabolic expense for warm-blooded animals that some of them have become Heterothermic.
Heterothermic: Having the ability to maintain a constant body temperature at some time, but allowing it to fluctuate at other times. The body temperature of some desert animals (camel, some antelopes) may rise significantly during the hottest part of the day, without injury to the animal. Other animals are able to survive extreme conditions by entering a state of Torpor.
Torpor: A physiological process characterized by a drop in body temperature almost to the level of the surroundings and a great reduction in the metabolic rate, heart rate, respiration (to one breath a minute or less), and many other functions. The torpid animal shows little response to external stimuli such as noise or being touched. However, the central nervous system continues to operate, and in many animals, a dangerous drop in surrounding temperatures may cause a regulated increase in heat production, keeping the body temperature to about five or six degrees centigrade above the environment. Or, it may cause arousal, in which the animal displays violent shivering and muscular contractions and apparently use fuel at a maximal rate in order to elevate the temperature as quickly as possible to normal level. Environmental stress is hardest on small animals, whose high metabolic rate requires a high food intake, and it is either on a daily cycle (some bats, hummingbirds) or on a yearly cycle, where torpidity is termed hibernation or estivation.
Hibernation: Torpor occurring during the cold weather months. Example: Some bats, rodents, insectivores, marsupials.
Estivation: Torpor occurring during summer when drought and/or reduction in food supply may make survival problematic (some rodents and some small prosimians).
Ungulates: An animal with hooves. The ungulates are divided into two classes: the even-toed ungulates such as the deer, giraffes and antelopes; and the odd-toed ungulates such as horses, zebras and rhinoceroses.
