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Secondary aquatic adaptations tend to develop in early speciation as the animal ventures into water in order to find available food. As successive generations spend more time in the water, natural selection causes the acquisition of more adaptations. Animals of later generations may spend most their life in the water, coming ashore for mating.
Aquatic animals generally conduct gas exchange in water by extracting dissolved oxygen via specialised respiratory organs called gills, through the skin or across enteral mucosae, although some are evolved from terrestrial ancestors that re-adapted to aquatic environments (e.g. marine reptiles and marine mammals), in which case they actually ...
Hoarding food for the long, cold winter. Adequate food resources and energy reserves are essential for an animal’s success and survival but winter food supplies and energy reserves are critical ...
Adult salamanders often have an aquatic phase in spring and summer, and a land phase in winter. For adaptation to a water phase, prolactin is the required hormone, and for adaptation to the land phase, thyroxine. External gills do not return in subsequent aquatic phases because these are completely absorbed upon leaving the water for the first ...
It seems to have been adapted to water much like a beaver, with teeth different in many ways from all other docodonts, presumably due to a difference in diet. Most docodonts had teeth specialized for an omnivorous diet. The teeth of Castorocauda suggest that the animal was a piscivore, feeding on fish and small invertebrates.
Marine mammals adaptation to deep and long duration breath-hold diving involves more efficient use of lungs that are proportionately smaller than those of terrestrial animals of similar size. The adaptations to the lungs allow more efficient extraction of oxygen from inhaled air, and a higher exchange rate of air of up to 90% of each breath.
A xerocole (from Greek xēros / ˈ z ɪ r oʊ s / 'dry' and Latin col(ere) 'to inhabit'), [2] [3] [4] is a general term referring to any animal that is adapted to live in a desert. The main challenges xerocoles must overcome are lack of water and excessive heat. To conserve water they avoid evaporation and concentrate excretions (i.e. urine and ...
Ponds also support larger mammals including water shrew and water vole. Badger setts are commonly found in pond banks where the ground slopes, [5] and other mammals such as foxes and domestic cattle and horses use ponds as a drinking water supply. All these animals and birds can also be vectors for pond-dwelling organisms. [citation needed]