Do animals exercise to keep fit?

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

Who cites it

9 citing papers in PubMed.

1. Heart rate biologgers reveal individual-specific energy landscapes for mule deer.Movement ecology · 2026
   Article
2. Physiological responses and adaptive mechanisms of amphibians and reptiles to multiple interacting environmental stressors: an integrative review.Frontiers in physiology · 2026
   Review
3. Chicks of cavity-nesting birds do not 'exercise' prior to fledging.Royal Society open science · 2025
   Article
4. A century of exercise physiology: concepts that ignited the study of human thermoregulation. Part 4: evolution, thermal adaptation and unsupported theories of thermoregulation.European journal of applied physiology · 2024
   Review
5. Mice from lines selectively bred for voluntary exercise are not more resistant to muscle injury caused by either contusion or wheel running.PloS one · 2022
   Article
6. Coevolution of body size and metabolic rate in vertebrates: a life-history perspective.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2020
   Article
7. The Ecology of Exercise: Mechanisms Underlying Individual Variation in Behavior, Activity, and Performance: An Introduction to Symposium.Integrative and comparative biology · 2017
   Article
8. Metabolic costs of capital energy storage in a small-bodied ectotherm.Ecology and evolution · 2017
   Article
9. Early-Life Effects on Adult Physical Activity: Concepts, Relevance, and Experimental Approaches.Physiological and biochemical zoology : PBZ
   Article

Corrections and comments

• Comment on
  Endurance training in humans: aerobic capacity and structure of skeletal muscle.1985
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  Effect of training on maximal oxygen uptake and aerobic capacity of locomotory muscles in tufted ducks, Aythya fuligula.1988
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  Physiological limits to sustainable energy budgets in birds and mammals: Ecological implications.1992
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  Development of metabolic enzyme activity in locomotor and cardiac muscles of the migratory barnacle goose.1995
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  Energy expenditure using isotope-labelled water (2H218O), exercise performance, skeletal muscle enzyme activities and plasma biochemical parameters in humans during 95 days of endurance exercise with inadequate energy intake.1997
• Comment on
  Evolutionary aspects of exercise.1997
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  The energetic cost of short flights in birds.2000
• Comment on
  How climate change might influence the starvation-predation risk trade-off response.2009
• Comment on
  Maximal heat dissipation capacity and hyperthermia risk: neglected key factors in the ecology of endotherms.2010
• Comment on
  Understanding sex differences in the cost of terrestrial locomotion.2012
• Comment on
  The starvation-predation trade-off predicts trends in body size, muscularity, and adiposity between and within Taxa.2012
• Comment on
  Cheetahs, Acinonyx jubatus, balance turn capacity with pace when chasing prey.2013
• Comment on
  Foraging currencies, metabolism and behavioural routines.2014
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  Mammalian energetics. Instantaneous energetics of puma kills reveal advantage of felid sneak attacks.2014
• Comment on
  Mammalian energetics. Flexible energetics of cheetah hunting strategies provide resistance against kleptoparasitism.2014
• Comment on
  The life history of whole-organism performance.2014
• Comment on
  The interactions between temperature and activity levels in driving metabolic rate: theory, with empirical validation from contrasting ectotherms.2015
• Comment on
  Cross-training in birds: cold and exercise training produce similar changes in maximal metabolic output, muscle masses and myostatin expression in house sparrows (Passer domesticus).2015
• Comment on
  Behavioural and physiological responses of wood mice (Apodemus sylvaticus) to experimental manipulations of predation and starvation risk.2015

Authors and funding

1 author.

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

Abstract

Indexed as