With global warming, some animals have begun to evolve ways to adapt to climate change.

On a warming planet, the ability of animals to adapt to climate change may be the difference between survival and extinction.

Now, researchers have found that some species adapt by changing their shapes. As the global temperature rises, their bodies have changed with time.

Deal with overheating by changing your body. The legs, tails and beaks of warm-blooded animals such as birds and mammals are getting bigger and bigger, thus improving their way of regulating body temperature.

Over time, scientists have examined the size of appendages of many species and found that the beak size of birds such as North American black-eyed snipe, songbirds and several Australian parrots has changed. Birds use their beaks to dissipate heat and lower their body temperature. The bigger the beak, the better the heat dissipation effect.

For Australian parrots, this change is very small, which has occurred for many generations, with an average increase of 4%, reaching 187 1 year. However, due to the short-term extreme temperature, the beak size becomes larger, indicating that it changes faster.

Studies on mammals show that many different species have increased in size. According to this study, the environment that the long-tailed and long-legged wooden mouse passes through is also changing.

Asaf Allen, an American zoologist, predicted this growth in size in 1877 by Allen's law, which shows that animals adapted to warm climate have larger limbs and appendages than those in cold regions. Heat-absorbing animals, including birds and mammals, keep their bodies at an appropriate temperature by using their beaks or tails to dissipate heat.

Sara Ryding, a co-author of the study, said that most of the size changes noticed by researchers were very small, less than 10%. However, these adaptations, which are sometimes not obvious, are essential for the survival of organisms when the environment changes.

"Deformation doesn't mean that animals are coping with climate change," Ryding said. "It just means that they are evolving to survive-but we are not sure what are the other ecological consequences of these changes, or that all species have the ability to change and survive."

Man-made climate change is happening too fast for all species to adapt. A study by Lund University in Sweden found that the chicks of overheated blue tits are smaller, and these offspring may have a lower chance of survival.

Rising earth temperature will also lead to more extreme weather, such as drought, and the risk of wildfires that destroy forests and other species-rich habitats. According to United Nations statistics, 654.38+0 million species of animals and plants are in danger of extinction due to climate change, pollution and biodiversity loss. Due to human activities, we are now in the sixth mass extinction.

Some species may survive by changing migration patterns to breed earlier (salmon) or adjusting their feathers to better disguise and reduce snowfall (yellow-brown owl). But scientists say that most species must evolve at a speed 10000 times faster than normal to survive.

Reading said that this means that when we talk about climate change, we should consider the survival of animals like humans.

"It's time for us to realize that animals have to adapt to these changes, but this happened in a much shorter time than most evolutionary periods," she said. "The climate change we caused has put a lot of pressure on them. Although some species will adapt, some will not. "