Meeting Abstract
Gait specific variations in the rate of heat storage may result in differential ability to conserve water in the dromedary camel (““Camelus dromedaries”“) and domestic donkey (““Equus asinus”“). Specifically, we sought to determine if the portion of cost of transport,COT (J.kg-1m-1) stored in core body tissues remained constant during 30-minutes of treadmill exercise in a walking gait (tread speed of 1.1m.s-1) and moderate speed (2.2m.s-1) gait, pacing and trotting in the camel and donkey, respectively. We continuously measured mass-specific oxygen consumption, and rectal temperature as an indicator of core body temperature, ““T”“b (°C),recorded these data at one minute intervals and averaged every five-minutes. The exercise trials were divided into three-stages: pre-exercise (20-min), exercise (30-min) and post-exercise (20-min). In addition we estimated the total volume of water conserved. The camel and donkey had pre-exercise mean core body temperatures of 36.0 ± 0.05 °C and 37.8 ± 0.05 °C, respectively. Regardless of gait, heat storage accounted for approximately 23% of COT in the donkey. However, heat storage accounted for approximately, 30% and 80% of COT in the walking and pacing gaits, respectively. As a result of enhanced heat storage in the pacing camel, mass-specific water conservation in the camel was approximately 3.2-fold greater than in the trotting donkey. During 30-minutes of moderate speed gaits, enhanced heat storage allowed the camel to conserved approximately 0.7 L of water, compared with approximately 0.2 L of water in the donkey.
