Warm blooded animals like us keep their temperature constant irrespective of the

Question

Warm blooded animals like us keep their temperature constant irrespective of their surroundings. But how do they do that? Energy should be supplied from the inside. I assume that reactions like making ATP from glucose are exothermic. That means in winter our body reacts more. Water is absorbed by those reaction.We should need more water in winter. Which is contradictory with our real life experience.

On the other hand what prevents cold blooded animals from making heat? Don't they need ATP? Do they use different types of reactions to make energy? Do they have different evolutionary path? They don't seems very different from us.

Explanation / Answer

Since there seems to be several distinct sub-topics in your question, I will answer them one-by-one:

1). There are a variety of mechanisms that allow endothermic animals to maintain thermal homeostasis in a cold environment. The main ones are:

a). The shivering response: When the core body temperature of a endotherm drops below a critical value (36.8C in humans), it causes the posterior hypothalamus to stimulate certain skeletal muscle groups (especially around vital organs) to start to "shiver" rapidly, generating heat.

b). Compared to ectotherms, endotherms have more mitochondria per cell, thus allowing them to have a higher metabolism. Since metabolism always generates heat, an [general] increase in cellular metabolism will cause an increase in body heat.

c). Many endotherms have layers of insulating matter, such as fur, blubber, feathers

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