snakes motabolism essays

snakes motabolism essays Eating, or ingesting food, is one of the main characteristics of the animal kingdom. Most of these animals metabolize their food at a rapid passe. But the metabolism of a snake is much slower then many other animals. This is due to one major factor. That is the temperature in which their bodies are. The metabolism works the same as other animals. It is just slower in a snake. The metabolism needs to be slower since the snake doesn't eat very often. This paper will prove that a snakes metabolism is slow because of 4 different reasons: A. behavior B. evolution C. temperature D. lifestyle. Most animals (including humans) eat at least once a day. If we go longer then about a week we could die of starvation. This is because our metabolic rate is fast. It burns whatever food we eat to make energy. When there is no more food to burn then we need to eat again. We do not store food for long periods of time either. Snakes on the other hand don't have to eat half as much as we do. They can eat about once a month and still be well fed. Snakes can even go for a full year without food. Of course this wouldn't be very healthy, but they would be able to survive. The reason snake can do this is because they have a much slower metabolic rate. They can store their food for much longer. When food is burned/metabolized it makes heat energy for the organism to live. Snakes can get this energy from basking in the sun. this is why they can go longer with out food. (Internet source-houston.rr.com) "Metabolism" in a biochemical sense is burning food in slow motion. If you set fire to food, you get ash (residual carbon, salts and metals), carbon dioxide, water vapor (both lost as gasses), and a *whole* lot of energy in the form of heat. Metabolism is the same thing done very slowly. The body reduces food items to water, carbon dioxide, waste products, and a *whole* lot of energy. The difference is that, ...