Thermoregulation
Thermoregulation is how living things control their body heat to stay at the right temperature.
A pot of soup sits on a burner set to low heat. When the soup gets too hot, the cook turns the flame down. When it cools too much, the cook turns it back up. A living body works the same way, adding or losing heat to stay at one steady warmth.
Explaining thermoregulation by grade level
When it gets cold outside, ants slow down and stop moving as much. Their bodies cool off because they cannot make their own heat. Warm days make them speed up again. You can watch ants move fast or slow just by changing how warm or cold it is.
Projects that explore thermoregulation
Ants dig tunnels and build mounds, but their speed depends entirely on the temperature around them. You fill a glass jar with soil to make an ant observatory, then watch the ants move at room temperature. Next, place the jar in a refrigerator for ten minutes. When you check again, the ants move much slower. As the temperature rises back up, they become active again. That shift in activity shows what happens when an animal cannot produce its own body heat — the environment controls the pace.
Anoles are cold-blooded reptiles that cannot generate their own warmth, so they use other strategies to control body heat — including shifting skin color. You observe an anole in a terrarium at its ideal temperature range of 75 to 90 degrees Fahrenheit. Then you lower the temperature to 70 degrees by adjusting the lamp. After 30 minutes, you check the skin color again. The shift in pigment reveals how these lizards regulate body temperature by changing color rather than burning energy from within.