phobia, which is based in both caregiver's and parents' misconceptions about fever in children. Among them, many parents incorrectly believe that fever is a disease rather than a medical sign, that even low fevers are harmful, and that any temperature even briefly or slightly above the oversimplified "normal" number marked on a thermometer is a clinically significant fever. They are also afraid of harmless side effects like febrile seizures and dramatically overestimate the likelihood of permanent damage from typical fevers. The underlying problem, according to professor of pediatrics Barton D. Schmitt, is that "as parents we tend to suspect that our children's brains may melt." As a result of these misconceptions parents are anxious, give the child fever-reducing medicine when the temperature is technically normal or only slightly elevated, and interfere with the child's sleep to give the child more medicine. Other species Fever is an important metric for the diagnosis of disease in domestic animals. The body temperature of animals, which is taken rectally, is different from one species to another. For example, a horse is said to have a fever above (). In species that allow the body to have a wide range of "normal" temperatures, such as camels, whose body temperature varies as the environmental temperature varies, the body temperature which constitutes a febrile state differs depending on the environmental temperature. Fever can also be behaviorally induced by invertebrates that do not have immune-system based fever. For instance, some species of grasshopper will thermoregulate to achieve body temperatures that are 2–5 °C higher than normal in order to inhibit the growth of fungal pathogens such as Beauveria bassiana and Metarhizium acridum. Honeybee colonies are also able to induce a fever in response to a fungal parasite Ascosphaera apis. References Further reading External links Fever and Taking Your Child's Temperature US National Institute of Health factsheet Drugs most commonly associated with the adverse event Pyrexia (Fever) as reported the FDA Fever at MedlinePlus Why are We So Afraid of Fevers? at The New York Times Wikipedia medicine articles ready to translate Wikipedia emergency medicine articles ready to translate Symptoms and signs