The physiological effects on isotropically heated populations of Oxytricha bifaria cultured at 24 °C were investigated. At 34.6 °C ciliates became inert, and did not adaptively react to either cold or warm microgradients; they neither moved towards the favorable cold thermal source nor escaped from the unfavorable warm one. The inert oxytrichas were only able to perform the Side-Stepping Reaction (SSR) on the same spot. However, mobile ciliates at 31.6 °C reacted to the cold microgradient by immediately orienting themselves towards its source, without accelerating but reducing their SSR frequency. Moreover, in a warm microgradient such ciliates immediately increased their SSR frequency, then moved away from the thermal source. At 34.6 °C the behavior of ciliates was not-adaptive—not acting to guide the organisms to more favorable conditions—whereas at 31.6 °C it was still clearly adaptive. Therefore, the locomotory inertness of the oxytrichas at 34.6 °C was the result of thermal stress rather than their behavioral response to the environmental isotropy, in contrast to populations of the same species made inert at 9 °C.