News inputs by Krisha Bansal
Australia, Sep 9: Climate change is not a human-only problem; animals have to adapt to it as well. Some “warm- blooded” animals are shapeshifting (changing animal structure) and getting larger beaks, legs, or ears to regulate their body temperature as our Earth gets hotter. Researcher Sara Ryding of Deakin University, Australia along with her colleagues has described these changes. She examined many of the museum specimens, studied data and literature of various animal studies to arrive at this conclusion. Strong shapeshifting has been reported in birds. In the 110 bird species that they studied 58% had longer appendages (body parts that project out like leg, hand, finger, beak, tail, etc.) Many of the Australian parrot species have shown, on an average a 4% to 10% increase in the size of their beak. Even North American dark-eyed juncos, a songbird showed increased size of its bill.
In mammals, wood mice reported increase in tail length, and leg size increased in masked shrews. Shapeshifting does not mean that animals are coping with the climate change. It just means that they are evolving to withstand it.
