Reblogged from greghyatt
Gloomy Days Suck
Shello. My name's Noel Oliver (pronounced: no-el). I love squids, cats, and lesbian couples. Oh also, I think i'm in love with my best friend.
I don’t know what’s taken me so long to post this fantastic piece I got from Ben Templesmith at Planet Comicon last week.
Most sharks are cold-blooded, or poikilotherms. But the family Lamnidae have managed to adapt and became homeothermic. This means they can keep a warmer body temperature than the surrounding water, benefiting these sharks in various ways. Swimming powers are rapidly enhanced with an increase in temperature, allowing their muscle tissues to contract at an efficient rate due to chemical reactions. Unlike their poikilotherm relatives, homeothermic sharks can also integrate into colder regions without facing many consequences. The warmth produced by sharks can be credited to both their specialized circulatory systems and possibly even their liver. The liver processes chemicals, which in turn produces prodigious quantities of waste heat. The rete mirabile is a parallel network of arteries and veins that allows lamnids to be more active predators by passing the heat from warm blood in the gills to cold blood from the arteries, retaining heat.
