Wednesday, August 23, 2017

Explain how a roadrunner fits its environment.

Roadrunners live in the desert, and they're uniquely suited for a hot, dry environment. Because they're carnivores, roadrunners have a lot of options when it's time to dine. They regularly eat insects, lizards, snakes, rodents, scorpions, and even other birds. Because of their speed and agility, roadrunners can pluck a hummingbird right out of the air. Roadrunners are also one of very few predators who eat rattlesnake.
To cope with desert dryness, roadrunners dial down their activity during the middle of the day when the desert is at its hottest. At night, they suppress their metabolisms and hunt. Doing this drops their body temperature a whopping seven degrees and allows them to reserve more energy for finding food. Come morning, they raise the feathers on their backs to reveal the dark skin beneath that soaks up the sun and raises their body temperature again.
Roadrunners also compliment their meaty diet with a lot of foods that are naturally full of water, like berries and milkweed. Then, before waste leaves their body, roadrunners' intestines reabsorb the water from it. Roadrunners also have glands above their eyes that get rid of excess salt from their body; this helps them stay hydrated too.

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