bbc.co.uk navigation

An Alpine marmot feeding

Altitude tolerant

Altitude tolerant organisms are adapted to living high up where oxygen levels - or carbon dioxide levels in the case of plants - are low. The upper reaches of mountain ranges are also often bitterly cold, or subject to swinging daily extremes in temperatures.

Watch video clips from past programmes (6 clips)

In order to see this content you need to have an up-to-date version of Flash installed and Javascript turned on.

View all 6 video clips

About

Altitude or height is defined based on the context in which it is used (aviation, geometry, geographical survey, sport, and more). As a general definition, altitude is a distance measurement, usually in the vertical or "up" direction, between a reference datum and a point or object. The reference datum also often varies according to the context. Although the term altitude is commonly used to mean the height above sea level of a location, in geography the term elevation is often preferred for this usage.

Vertical distance measurements in the "down" direction are commonly referred to as depth.

Read more at Wikipedia

This entry is from Wikipedia, the user-contributed encyclopedia. If you find the content in the 'About' section factually incorrect, defamatory or highly offensive you can edit this article at Wikipedia. For more information on our use of Wikipedia please read our FAQ.

Behaviours

Other Adapted to extremes behaviours

BBC © 2012 The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Read more.

This page is best viewed in an up-to-date web browser with style sheets (CSS) enabled. While you will be able to view the content of this page in your current browser, you will not be able to get the full visual experience. Please consider upgrading your browser software or enabling style sheets (CSS) if you are able to do so.