P1 5 Social Thermoregulation in Capybaras

Abstract

In cold conditions capybaras often gather closely with one another, forming tight groups to conserve warmth. In this paper, we model the thermal advantage of capybara huddling using Newtonian cooling. We show analytically that heat loss per animal is proportional to the inverse square root of group size. Subsequently, we determine that the cooling time of capybaras in a huddle increases proportionately to the square root of the group size. This indicates that group behaviour is an energetically efficient thermoregulatory mechanism.