>>13903141Actually, feathers are BETTER at insulation than hair, due to their structure being better at trapping air (which is the insulator). Ever wondered why you stuff things that keep you warm with feathers and not with hair?
By the way, insulating structures also keep animals cool in warm climates, and protects them from the sun. Turkeys have overheating problems due to their naked heads getting sunburnt (but they have naked heads because chicks dig naked heads), not due to being coated. There's a reason desert people are covered from head to toe rather than going around naked.
As for elephants, rhinos and hippos, well, you know which other animal is also among the largest land mammals, tying on average weight with the black rhino? The giraffe. Which is quite hairy, despite living in the same area as the largest elephants, rhinos and hippos. And I doubt you'd even think of the even larger Sivatherium as elephant-skined, either.
Elephants have aquatic ancestors and have thin hair all over their body. Hippos are aquatic and hairless, even the boar-sized pigmy one. Rhinos are more hairy, and the smallest species has plenty of hair. But, more importantly, THEY ARE BUILT LIKE BRICKS. Short limbs, huge bodies, huge fermenting guts that produce insane ammounts of gas and heat, not so efficient mammalian metabolisms...
An elephant-weight Tyrannosaurus would:
-Appear quite larger, due to more slender and elongated body proportions, incluiding a tail half its lenght; therefore, higher body surface.
-Have a more efficient respiratory system, as monoflow lungs are found in both crocs and birds, as well as having plenty of airsacks; higher respiratory surface.
-More efficient metabolism: Dinosaurs seem to have mantained lower body temperatures than mammals, and that made them grow to such sizes due to needing less food to stay alive, yet being active enough to not run as a poikiloterm animal. (continuation soon)
