Global Warming is Changing the Wild Kingdom

Global Warming is Changing the Wild World

The planet is warming, humans are mostly to blame and plants and animals are going to dramatic lengths to cope. That's the consensus of a number of recent studies that used wildlife to gauge the extent of global warming and its effects.

The strange behaviors in the wild kingdom are leading many scientists to conclude the world is changing in unnatural ways.

A study analyzed numerous studies involving wild plant and animals for changes due to global warming. Out of the nearly 1,500 species examined, the researchers found that about 1,200 exhibited temperature-related changes consistent with what scientists would expect if they were being affected by global warming.There will be no doubt as animals only react directly according to what they feel.

Here are some changes occur among animals and plants due to unnatural climate change:

Land animals
*Reindeer are expected to disappear from large portions of their current range by the end of the century.
*Marmots are ending their hibernations about three weeks earlier than they did 30 years ago.
*Canadian red squirrels are breeding about 18 days earlier.
*Red foxes are spreading northward, encroaching on territory normally occupied by their arctic cousins.
*North American Fowler's toads are breeding six days later than they did a decade ago.
*Polar bears today are thinner and less healthy than those of 20 years ago.

Sealife
*Coral reefs around the world are predicted to increase by up to a third in size.
*Elephant seal pups are leaner because their prey is migrating to cooler waters.
*Loggerhead sea turtles are laying their eggs about 10 days earlier than they did 15 years ago.
*Rising temperatures are influencing the sex of Hawkbill turtle hatchlings, with more females than males being born.
*Tidal organisms like rock barnacles, mollusks, and tidal snails commonly found in warm southern waters are moving northward.
*Many fish species are moving northward in search of cooler waters.

Birds
*The diet of some songbirds are changing, with some avoiding insects that consume leaves exposed to high levels of carbon dioxide.
*North American tree swallows are laying their eggs about nine days earlier than they did 40 years ago.
*Common murres are breeding 24 days earlier than they did a decade ago.

Plants
*Some plants are thriving in areas where their growth was limited before, thanks to temperature changes that provide more water, heat and sunlight.
*American flowering plants like columbines and wild geraniums are blooming earlier than before.

Insects
*Edith's checkerspot butterflies are moving northward in search of cooler temperatures.
*A gene in the fruitfly Drosophila normally associated with hot, dry conditions has spread to populations living in traditionally cooler southern regions.

Increase in temperatures will not only affect ecosystems and wildlife but also human being. The rising of temperatures could aggravate health risks such as asthma for the elderly, the poor, and especially for those in poor developing countries. Many scientists believed that it may not be too late to save the earth from global warming even though it might be a very hard task to accomplish.

By: CeSCa (A.S.Rainbow Society)
Source from: LiveScience