Posted by:
PHLdyPayne
at Sat Jun 19 03:57:56 2010 [ Email Message ] [ Show All Posts by PHLdyPayne ]
UV itself does not produce heat. Infrared radiation is heat energy. What UV light does, especially high levels of UVB, is damage skin. If you are protected from UVB radiation by say...Sunblock or thick scales/naturally dark pigment (such as African tribes). UV radiation is also not the only radiation bombarding the Earth from the sun, it is pretty much hit by the full spectrum of light energy, fortunately the majority of the harmful radiation is blocked by the ozone layer and atmosphere.
Things underneath UVB sources do warm up because the energy within UVB rays does get absorbed, causing electrons etc to get excited and this produces heat. But this is the same sort of reaction you can get from say, friction.
In the case of the poor dragon left out in the sun, it was overall air temperature which cause its death, not just because UVB was present too. The original poster didn't indicate what time of day she had her dragon out...if it was late afternoon, or early morning, the amount of UVB radiation would be much less than say between 10am and 3pm.
There are many sun loving lizards, running about in full sunlight during high levels of UVB radiation, but its the heat radiating off the rocks, sand, etc around them as well as infrared radiation heating up the air, that drives them to see cool shaded areas.
It is far too much of a generalization to say UVB was a contributing factor in the dragon's death...I really don't feel it had very much affect giving the fact dragon's scales can filter out a far greater percentage of UVB than our skin. Bearded dragons and other sun loving reptiles have protective layers of skin, reptiles that are nocturnal or live in thick cover (ie forests, jungles, etc.) also don't have as much layers.
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PHLdyPayne
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RE: DON'T DO WHAT I DID !!!!!!!!!!!! - PHLdyPayne, Sat Jun 19 03:57:56 2010