Wet mammals shake at tuned frequencies to dry
In cold wet weather, mammals face hypothermia if they cannot dry themselves. By rapidly oscillating their bodies, through a process similar to shivering, furry mammals can dry themselves within seconds. We use high-speed videography and fur particle tracking to characterize the shakes of 33 animals...
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Published in | Journal of the Royal Society interface Vol. 9; no. 77; pp. 3208 - 3218 |
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Main Authors | , , |
Format | Journal Article |
Language | English |
Published |
England
The Royal Society
07.12.2012
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Subjects | |
Online Access | Get full text |
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Summary: | In cold wet weather, mammals face hypothermia if they cannot dry themselves. By rapidly oscillating their bodies, through a process similar to shivering, furry mammals can dry themselves within seconds. We use high-speed videography and fur particle tracking to characterize the shakes of 33 animals (16 animals species and five dog breeds), ranging over four orders of magnitude in mass from mice to bears. We here report the power law relationship between shaking frequency f and body mass M to be f ∼ M−0.22, which is close to our prediction of f ∼ M−0.19 based upon the balance of centrifugal and capillary forces. We also observe a novel role for loose mammalian dermal tissue: by whipping around the body, it increases the speed of drops leaving the animal and the ensuing dryness relative to tight dermal tissue. |
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Bibliography: | ArticleID:rsif20120429 ark:/67375/V84-TK94W0F6-B istex:06EAE4FBA6E1CDDF65C4D8CAFABF151188DAFE4E href:rsif20120429.pdf ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23 |
ISSN: | 1742-5689 1742-5662 |
DOI: | 10.1098/rsif.2012.0429 |