The Comparison And Difference Analysis About Heat Holding Ability Of The Skin And Hair Of Weasel Lived In Harbin Plain And Forest Areas

The animals all over the world have to adapt their local environment, especially have the ability to get used to the extreme temperature. For the mammals with constant body temperature, skins are very important on adapting the environment and maintaining the constant of core body temperature, because which is a medium directly contacted with the external environment. However, the quantification of heat transferring information of animals especially weasels were rarely studied. It was necessary to accumulate the quantified heat transferring information, especially the heat preservation ability of animal hairs and skins, for studying the adoption between the animal and environment. Based on the test platform of animal body thermal parameters, the contactless infrared imaging system was used in this study for evaluation the hides (skin) and hairs of two different Northeast Asia subspecies male weasel which lived in Harbin plain and forest areas, respectively. Ten skin samples were tested for comparing the differences and the effectives of sampling time on the heat preservative ability of two types of weasels. The results of animal body thermal parameter test were shown as follow, the saline at a concentration of0.9%were selected for the24h’s refresh and72h’s natural air-dried pretreatment;5000mm2of the skin on the back and buttocks of weasels were selected for heat transferring test and the testing time was4h. The average values of the temperature differences between the cold and hot surface and the heat flux test between each sampling time intervals were extracted. The heat transfer coefficient was calculated follow the equation as follow, K (heat transfer coefficient)=1/((hot and cold surface temperature difference/heat flux)+1/23). The final results were analyzed by using one sample T-test (SPSS17.0). The heat transferring performance of the weasels lived in Tonghe forest area (the average heat transfer coefficient of3.92) was significantly lower (P<0.05) than the ones lived in Harbin plains (average heat transfer coefficient of4.35). However, there was no significant difference (P>0.05) in the comparison of the effective of sampling time on heat transferring performance. That might because the hair and skin of weasels were almost keep steady during the entire winter. The images of the selected animal hairs and skins were taken by using the infrared camera, and followed by analyzing through FLIR Quick Report1.2SP1software. There was no significant difference (P>0.05) between the maximum, minimum and average temperature of the weasels’hair and skin from different habitats. However, the average temperature of the samples from Harbin plains (28.48℃) was slightly higher than which from Tonghe forest area (28.12℃) and the same as the maximum values (30.64℃of plain area;29.66℃of Tonghe forest area). That suggested the heat preserving properties of the weasels’ hides from Tonghe forest area is better than which from Harbin plains. The quantified information obtained from the heat-transferring test could also verify the previous studies on the morphological properties of weasels from different habitats. Compared with Harbin plains, Tonghe forest area has a long winter, so that the animals in where needed better hairs and skins for maintain their body metabolism.