Which animal would lose heat fastest – a mouse, hippo or elephant?
This is an ambiguous question, because the answer depends upon what you mean by losing heat. The larger animals have much more internal heat energy than the mouse and could lose several times as much without a major drop in body temperature. The mouse would lose temperature more quickly because its available heat energy is much lower, due to lower total mass. However, the rate at which it loses total heat energy will be lower. Surface area and internal temperature also play a role. A hotter object loses heat faster than a cooler one with the same surface area and external ambient temperature. The rate of heat transfer also depends upon a lot of other factors, including the type and flow rate of the atmosphere outside the radiating body. Your experiment is going to model which animal’s temperature would drop the fastest if all of the external factors are constant, I think.
