Due to global warming, some animals are forced to change their eating habits in order to survive
He is about to end up run over, his mother saves himMore and more often we hear about the global rise in the earth's temperature and the tropicalization of the seas. And more and more often we see violent ones natural phenomena unexpected and sometimes apparently inexplicable. THE climate change they are a terribly current topic capable of upsetting not only our life but also that of the animal world.
Especially theirs eating habitsbe they mammals, birds or fish.
Some species have been forced, due to the changing climatic conditions, to change their diet: this is the case of arctic foxes that they literally put themselves in diet to lose weight. And what about some varieties of rodents that have seen their body weight increase as temperatures rise.
The phenomenon has affected various animal species in the world, which have had to come up with a real one survival strategy in relation to the new climatic conditions.
To support these theses the research conducted by the Professor Yoram Yom Tov, professor of the Department of Zoology at Tel Aviv University, who for many years has been studying the body evolution of many species as a function of climate change, in the areas where such changes have been more extreme.
You go to some birds Present in Great Britain, alle red foxes and of rates of Denmark, up to the foxes and lynxes of the Scandinavian regions.
The greater the changes in the climate, the more evident the adaptation that the body of the affected animals undergoes. "These changes can be seen as an indicator of climate change - explains Yom-Tov - especially at high latitudes the temperature variation reaches 3-4 degrees, and this effect has a strong impact".
In his article published by Global Change Biology, the biologist describes us as the arctic foxes have been forced to drastically reduce their weight, to "shrink", to better cope with the change in Sub-Polar Gyre, the prevailing current of the area, which influenced the availability of food in the surrounding environment.
Analyzing the size of thousands of Arctic fox specimens and comparing the data with those collected in previous years, it was understood that the species has undergone a real loss of weight over the years.
The phenomenon can be explained by the fact that a smaller body is able to dissipate heat more and therefore better cope with the increase in external temperature.
But the climatic upheavals to which our ecosystem is subject not only lead to weight loss, but also to the exact opposite: some small Alaskan rodents have increased their body mass over the years. "In this case another effect prevails - explains Yom-Tov - warmer winters imply a longer duration of the season in which the animals feed, and therefore a greater availability of food that they can take advantage of".
Research is not just about i mammals but also many birds: eight different species of passerines in the last twenty years have lost 4% of theirs body mass. Some fish have also had to cut their weight in half to cope with climate change.
Once again the transformation that man has imposed on the environment in which he lives has repercussions on the entire ecosystem.
Lorenzo DeRitis
