To analyse the effect of obesity on exercise-derived heat dissipation, lean and obese Zucker rats were exercised on an inclined treadmill until they would no longer run with gentle prodding. We measured their oxygen consumption, water vapour loss, the concentrations of adenosine tri-and diphosphate, creatine phosphate, and lactate in quick-frozen leg muscles, and the temperature of muscle, skin and blood in the aorta. We determined blood flow to leg muscle, fat and skin by measuring the entrapment of fluorescent microspheres. From the measurements we calculated heat flow rates between hind leg muscle, blood, fat and skin and the environment. The obese rats weighed twice as much as the lean (340-400 g and 175-200 g respectively) and ran half as fast (113 +/- 7 m versus 257 +/- 17 m). The differences between the two groups for basal oxygen consumption (lean: 6.7 +/- 0.9 mu mol/min, obese: 5.0 +/- 1.9 mu mol/min) and exercising oxygen consumption (lean: 37.8 +/- 5.6 mu mol/min, obese: 22.2 +/- 3.8 mu mol/min) were not significant. Both groups stopped running after the same time at their maximal speed (lean: 3.5 +/- 0.3 min, obese: 4.2 +/- 0.2 min). During exercise, lean rats had higher increases in core temperature (lean: 0.7 degrees C, obese: 0.4 degrees C) and muscle temperatures (lean: 1.3 degrees C, obese: 0.7 degrees C) than the obese rats. The calculated heat flows indicated a predominant conductive transfer of heat from muscle through the skin in lean rats but a higher proportion of heat transfer to the blood in obese rats. II is concluded that muscle heat accumulation did not cause fatigue in either case.