With the world slowly getting hotter each moment that passes by, how do animals cope with the heat? Unlike we humans who have air-conditioners which could keep an enclosed environment cool, animals don’t have this revolutionary piece of technology. So how are they able to withstand the scorching heat? To solve this temperature problem, animals have resorted to “changing the sizes and shapes of certain body parts”.
The animals’ shapes-shifting changes make sense, researchers say. In biology, an established concept called Bergmann's rule states that creatures that live in colder climates tend to be larger and thicker than those closer to the equator—to better conserve heat. The rule is named after Carl Bergmann, a nineteenth century biologist who first described the pattern in 1847. Thirty years later, another biologist, Joel Asaph Allen further expanded the concept, stating that animals that adapted to cold climates have shorter limbs and bodily appendages—to keep the warmth in. For similar thermoregulatory reasons, the reverse is also commonly true—in hotter climates warm-blooded animals’ appendages become larger, relative to their body size.
The team of researchers from Deakin University in Australia and Brock University in Canada found that, since 1871, parrots have enlarged their beak surface by up to 10 percent, while roundleaf bats have very slightly increased their wing size since the 1950s.
Learn more about this study over at Smithsonian Magazine.
(Image Credit: Alexandra McQueen)
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