These thermal gains reported for these species appear attributable to the trapping of the metabolic heat generated by the caterpillars as they process food.

The amount of such metabolic heat can be correlated (through experimentation) with the number of cells or organisms present.

Therefore, the metabolic heat of ca. 33,000 cells is detectable.

The sphenacodontids gave rise to the therapsids, which lacked the sail and may have controlled their body temperatures using metabolic heat.

There is also no blood vessel countercurrent exchange system (the rete mirabile) in the trunk to limit the loss of metabolic heat to the water.

The maggots produce metabolic heat from bacterial digestion of the flesh, which enables them to develop while stored in a cold location.

As such, they spend their nights in burrows or crevices, where they create warm environments by quickly generating metabolic heat.

The eggs inside the flask shaped pits, being incubated by sun and the metabolic heat, hatch after 50 to 60 days.

A rare exception, the naked mole rat, produces little metabolic heat, so it is considered an operational poikilotherm.

Land drainage reduces evaporation, changes solar heat into metabolic heat and transforms enormous energy flows within it.