Climate change is causing changes in animals, forcing them to cope with rapidly warming temperatures by physically metamorphosing or "shapeshifting," a new study reports.
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Over the past 150 years, Australian parrots, such as the gang-gang cockatoo and red-rumped, have shown up to a 10% average increase in beak size in line with rising temperatures in their natural environments, according to research published Tuesday in the journal Trends in Ecology & Evolution.
Brightly colored parrots aren't the only victims of a warmer world. Several other bird species in North America and Australia have seen their beaks grow larger, mice have bigger ears, and some bats are sporting a larger set of wings.
These larger “features” are expected to help the animals cope with hot weather because they offer a larger surface area for releasing body heat. “This is not necessarily an increase that is visible to the naked eye,” Ryding noted, “but it is still significant.”.
Although evolution has been happening since the beginning of life on Earth, Ryding worries that its speed has now accelerated sharply.
The team's study, which drew on thousands of previously published papers to compare trends in animal shape change in response to climate change, identified that rampant adaptations occur relatively early in the projected timeline of the climate crisis.
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The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is already calling the previous goal of many countries to limit global warming in the coming decades to 1.5 degrees, or even 2 degrees, as "unattainable.".
The correlation makes sense, because of early research developed in 1877 by American zoologist and ornithologist Joel Asaph Allen. Joel basically stated that animals living in warmer climates would have longer, longer “features” than those living in colder regions.
Information source: cnet.com
