The term homeotherm is used to account for an animal that maintains its temperature constant and far from the temperature of the environment in which it is found because it has developed mechanisms that allow it to regulate it in the face of changes that occur outside; is the case of birds and mammals, mostly.
Meanwhile, the state of affairs just described is possible because of the homeothermy or endothermy, which is the process from which those homeothermic living beings manage to maintain their body temperature within constant limits and independently of the ambient temperature, consuming chemical energy that comes from the food they eat, because they have sophisticated mechanisms that allow them to produce heat in cold environments and yield in terms of heat in those rather cold environments.
The aforementioned mechanisms are located in the hypothalamus, the skin, the respiratory system, among the main ones.
As a consequence of this self-sufficiency of heat, for example, penguins are able to resist and survive in extremely low temperatures.
Meanwhile, when the ambient temperature is very high, the wise mechanism of homeothermic animals lowers considerably in order to save on energy.
As mentioned above, mammals and birds are the two large groups that possess this characteristic, although not the only ones, there are some species of shark that show this thermoregulatory disposition.
And on the contrary of the homeotherms we find the ectotherms, which are those animals that do not have the aforementioned self-regulatory mechanism. For example, reptiles They are a true reflection of ectotherms, since they need to be exposed for long hours in the sun in order to achieve the ideal temperature for their metabolism to function properly; By not being able to produce heat, the ectotherm does not waste energy and then it can go a long time without feeding, that is, the snake can go months without eating, on the other hand, a mammal needs to feed itself daily.
