Animals 'Shapeshifting' in Response To Climate Crisis, Research Finds (theguardian.com) 54
Animals are increasingly "shapeshifting" because of the climate crisis, researchers have said. From a report: Warm-blooded animals are changing their physiology to adapt to a hotter climate, the scientists found. This includes getting larger beaks, legs and ears to better regulate their body temperature. When animals overheat, birds use their beaks and mammals use their ears to disperse the warmth. Some creatures in warmer climates have historically evolved to have larger beaks or ears to get rid of heat more easily. These differences are becoming more pronounced as the climate warms. If animals fail to control their body temperature, they can overheat and die. Beaks, which are not covered by feathers and therefore not insulated, are a site of significant heat exchange, as are ears, tails and legs in mammals if not covered by fur.
The review, published in the journal Trends in Ecology & Evolution, found that the differences are particularly pronounced in birds. The author of the study, Sara Ryding of Deakin university, a bird researcher, said: "Shapeshifting does not mean that animals are coping with climate change and that all is fine. "It just means they are evolving to survive it -- but we're not sure what the other ecological consequences of these changes are, or indeed that all species are capable of changing and surviving." While the scientists say it is difficult to pinpoint climate breakdown as the sole cause of the shapeshifting, it is what the instances studied have in common across geographical regions and across a diverse array of species. Examples include several species of Australian parrot that have shown a 4-10% increase in bill size since 1871, positively correlated with the summer temperature each year.
The review, published in the journal Trends in Ecology & Evolution, found that the differences are particularly pronounced in birds. The author of the study, Sara Ryding of Deakin university, a bird researcher, said: "Shapeshifting does not mean that animals are coping with climate change and that all is fine. "It just means they are evolving to survive it -- but we're not sure what the other ecological consequences of these changes are, or indeed that all species are capable of changing and surviving." While the scientists say it is difficult to pinpoint climate breakdown as the sole cause of the shapeshifting, it is what the instances studied have in common across geographical regions and across a diverse array of species. Examples include several species of Australian parrot that have shown a 4-10% increase in bill size since 1871, positively correlated with the summer temperature each year.
Yeah no kidding (Score:4, Funny)
Have you seen what a middle-aged man looked like in the 1960s?
28 inch waistline with skinny legs and no belly.
How about now? More like 38 inch waist, flabby legs and potbelly.
Will this help us survive the coming food shortages?
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Drome.It's Videodrome. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Hey baby, check out my famine protection package
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I know all the cannibals are thankful.
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Sorry, old fat white men are too high in cholesterol!
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You may be trying to make a stupid joke. However our environment does have a big deal of influence on how we look like.
While I don't propose that we should go Vegan or even Vegetarian, Americans tend to eat more meat than what we really need, so we are given a lot of protein in our diets which does add to our bulk. Also how much of our diet consists of a lot of extra carbs and simple sugars too creates that beer belly.
A lot of these changes during our development has created permanent changes to our body.
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Unfortunately rice, wheat, potatoes, oats, and corn are cheap and the people who buy them from the farmers heavily fund research to support their very high margin products. Many doctors have rejected the ideas from that research at this point but despite that a 'heart healthy' diet from a cardiologist today looks little different than it did in the 90s.
Meat and greens are the primary staple diet we evolved to eat with infrequent and spor
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Will this help us survive the coming food shortages?
What do you think my 60" waist is for? I'll outlast you all!
Re:It's called adaptation... (Score:5, Insightful)
Scientists explain a finding.
The average guy goes: Hold up their buddy, I don't know what you are talking about with that Nerd talk. You need to explain it so I can understand it, otherwise you are just talking down to me.
The Scientists simplify the message a bit more.
The average guy goes: No still a bit too complex for me.
The Scientist makes it really simple, so the basic idea is understood.
The average guy then picks apart the whole concept, because its over simplified form explained so he could understand has a lot of gaps and exceptions to the idea. So he thinks the Scientists is just an idiot.
One time I had a customer ask me to give him a forecast model of some data to go 3 months out. My I had the forecast in a nice graph, but after the current days that line became a fuzzy area chart was broken up by standard Deviations. The customer hated it, so I forecast the mean. The actual results never hit the mean, but they were within the first Standard Deviation, however the customer stated that I was wrong and didn't give useful information.
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A lot depends on what you mean.
If you mean you don't always put complete trust in every individual scientist, that's a very good idea. Science as an enterprise is unique in the degree it tolerates what for want of a better word I'll call "crackpots". In fact people whose convictions get way ahead of anything they can demonstrate with evidence play a vital role in science, they just have to play by certain rules in scientific forums. But outside of those forums they can say or do whatever they please. I'
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I am somewhat curious whether the usage of evolution in place of adaptation is really so commonplace that the distinction is generally lost, even in scientific reporting.
Tiresome, but altogether unsurprising if so.
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The rules of a religion determine how fast it spreads and how resilient it is to opposing religions.
Christianity and Judaism have a philosophy of "live and let live". Christians largely, but admittedly not always, solve philosophical disputes through debate and taking the opinion of leaders and scholars. Islam has the philosophy of "convert or kill", solving disputes among factions with war, and lack a hierarchy of leadership and scholarship to moderate the most violent among them. This means Christians built cathedrals, cities, universities, and made considerable advancements in science. Where Islam
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By Scientists do you mean actual biologists, or just the random guy with an 8th grade understanding of science trying to disprove some guy touting creationism, or the narrator of a National Geographic documentary?
Actual Scientists who are professional biologists, are not so hung up on Evolution as you may think. Those who study biology past the required 10th grade science class, where they were probably more interested about not looking like a total dweeb in-front of their crush. Actually learn and study a
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That quickly becomes apparent as the atheists must box in the properties and characteristics of 'God' to even begin to make their claim and creationists battle some misguided no
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You need to demonstrate what those mechanisms are if they're not natural selection.
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There are also known examples of birds who's physiology adapts to very short term climate changes... and then change right back when the climate reverts. So, QED... boss man.
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You need to demonstrate what those mechanisms are if they're not natural selection.
1. Epigenetics [wikipedia.org]
2. Individual adaption. Ditch diggers have calluses on their hands. That isn't because of natural selection.
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Actually, this is specific subcategory of adaptation known as morphological adaptation. That is where rather than go the slow path of genetic adaptation, selection is done on a much faster scale by selecting among different expression of existing genome.
I.e. how we bred dogs from wolves, or how North Europeans lost their dark skin pigmentation.
Beyond the pointless "amagad, GLOBAL WARMING", there's nothing actually interesting about the story. The entire point of being able to select based on genetic express
Re: The HORRORORRORRRRRRR! (Score:2)
Stop spreading BULLSHIT ASSHOLES! You shall not parse!
Multi-purpose. (Score:2)
Beaks, which are not covered by feathers and therefore not insulated, are a site of significant heat exchange, as are ears, tails and legs in mammals if not covered by fur.
Oh, my. So humans aren't going to get bigger...um, you know to cool off?
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Arms? Legs?
Larger Genitals probably wouldn't offer enough change to our surface area to help us cool off, compared to are Arms, Legs fingers and toes, which help us regulate our temperature much better.
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I think most of Africa disproves that.
Correlation correlates with causation (Score:2)
...but it doesn't necessarily cause it.
Dinosaurs comin' back baby (Score:2)
"Sally, if'n we can get that planet there hot enough, d'em chickens gonna turn into some T-rex's eventually."
Not fast enough (Score:3)
Reminder: Evolution is about 4 orders of magnitude slower than global warming. [arizona.edu]
The Climate challenge, once again (Score:3, Informative)
Though experiments in the Climate science are understandably hard (if not outright impossible) to conduct — because of the scales involved — given the discipline's 50+ age, by now, there's got to be some successful prediction they made.
Hence the challenge: cite two such predictions. The rules:
Listings of failed predictions [cei.org] are easy to find — which is normal for any science. Can you offer some successes?
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A cynic might suggest you're just too lazy to do your own research into a topic which could literally determine the fate of our civilization. If you're really interested, which I suspect you're not, you could start your education here:
https://skepticalscience.com/
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Why don't you copy-paste from there yourself — following the four simple and reasonable rules I listed?
I think, that's because you cannot... There are no such predictions.
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It's challenges like this that will cause people to post a link to that political cartoon where a person in the audience of a global warming presentation makes the protestation of something like, "What if we improve the environment and this is all a hoax?" It's because of such protestation that I stepped outside of the global warming debate and bring up the issue of seeking solutions.
Another problem with the global warming panic is ignoring that there is a cost to doing everything to lower CO2 emissions, a
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Listings of failed predictions [cei.org] are easy to find — which is normal for any science.
How are you distinguishing between predictions that were, or at least might have been, correct at the time, but didn't come to pass because of actions that were taken in response to those predictions (chemical poisoning, acid rain, ozone depletion, etc), those that were hyperbolic but may yet come to pass, and those which were flat out wrong?
The page you link to seems to have, with no apparent sense of irony, conflated them all to further a specific narrative.
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I'm not distinguishing.
But I note, that — despite bothering to reply — you didn't offer even one entry... Why is that?
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But I note, that — despite bothering to reply — you didn't offer even one entry... Why is that?
Because I have already made a number [slashdot.org] of predictions [slashdot.org] on this site during the past ~10 years. They are publicly available. I could also have linked to predictions about the (then) future release of methane clathrates as global temperatures rose, with a corresponding link to later surveys showing the process underway - but that would have taken more effort finding them than I was prepared to expend on feeding the troll.
I have simply reached the conclusion that some people, e.g. those who would uncritically pos
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Oh, that's great! Can you arrange your predictions in accordance with the four rules I put forth? To make them easier to validate?
That seems like "sour grapes". You don't need to persuade me — this is not a private conversation, but a public forum. You'll persuade others. If you can, that is...
Solutions? Can we talk about solutions? (Score:3)
Yep, I got it, global warming is bad and it's largely from people burning fossil fuels. Can we get more articles on solutions?
There's a lot of good news out there on people finding solutions to global warming. I see it every day on other sites. Is nobody interested?
Oh, right, we can't talk about solutions here. That's because the solutions involve energy sources that are so bad we can't dare mention their name or risk being moderated down, being accused of being a shill, and have insults throw our way. We can't even take the time to reflect on the gains we've made in lowering CO2 in the recent past.
Nope, we can only discuss how bad things are getting, and not even think how things can get better.
This is shoddy science and/or shoddy reporting. (Score:1)
US kids whose grandparents fled the totalitarian regime of communist Viet Nam in the 1970s, are significantly taller than their genetically indistinguishable ancestors.
Is that "shapeshifting" or "evolving"?
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The height increase is probably due to all the growth hormone US farmers feed their livestock being passed up the food chain.
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Or it's people getting enough nutrition that their physical development is not stunted. But sure, go ahead and think it's the hormones if you like, that's more tasty beef for me.
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Both are probably in play. Not that it's particularly germaine, but I eat beef. I'm careful about where I get it, though. I should also mention that although growth hormone is allowed in beef in Canada (though it's not in the sources I use), it is NOT allowed in chicken or pork.
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There's now an average of 3" in height difference between North and South Korea.
It's due to North Korea's food shortages and poor quality of much of that same food.
Since WW2, Japan has had average heights increasing as well since their food distribution and quality of nutrition has greatly improved.
It's been studied and is pretty clearly documented, poor quality nutrition and lack o
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That was exactly my point. Creatures getting longer noses or beaks or feet or whatever, compared to a few decades ago, is not anywhere close to being an example of "evolution" nor even "shapeshifting to deal with the stress of Climate Crisis". The entire premise of this discussion seems rife with various prejudicial biases and fallacious illogic to meet a conclusion they were already convinced of, without equal consideration of other possible models or explanations. There's no actual science here; it's spec
Adaption ... (Score:2)
Evolving? (Score:2)
"Shapeshifting does not mean that animals are coping with climate change and that all is fine. "It just means they are evolving to survive it
How about just adapting to survive it? Everything doesn't have to be evolution. Differing genes can be activated in differing conditions... but they were there to begin with.