maintained body mass at the level of 15% weight loss. Initial findings indicated that these species would stop eating if water was with drawn completely for a period. Thus for this study,water was gradually reduced from the ad libitum intake over a period of approximately one month until the desired weight change had occurred. Details of this procedure have been previously reported (Taylor, 1968b; Maloiy and Taylor, 1971). Food intake and digestibility during dehydration were measured for an 8–14 day period after the desired 15% level of dehydration had been established, for both the constant (22 °C) and for the 12-hour cyclic
temperature (22 °C and 40 °C) periods. Samples of food offered, and faeces produced were collected daily, weighed and frozen. A sample of the food and faeces was then dried to
constant weight in a forced air-oven at 105 °C.