Okay, but how do birds handle a heatwave?
E33. When the air temperature climbs past a bird's own body temperature, staying cool stops being free and starts to cost them water they may not have. Dr. Blair Wolf, University of New Mexico, has spent his career studying how desert birds survive heat that should kill them, and what happens when it finally gets too hot.
In this episode you'll hear about:
Why some backyard birds can shrug off oven-like temperatures while others just a few feet away don't make it
The strange, water-saving trick birds use to dump heat without a single drop of sweat
What the birds dying in these heatwaves are…
The skinny
The skinny isn't ready yet — notes appear once the transcript is processed.