My, what a big beak you have!
For humans, adapting to climate change will mostly be a matter of technology. More air conditioning, better-designed houses and bigger flood defenses may help to make the effects of a warmer world less harmful. In a paper published in Trends & Evolution, a team led by Sara Ryding, a PhD candidate at Deakin University, shows that is already. happening. Climate change is already changing the bodies of many animal species: bigger beaks (喙), limbs and ears.
In some species of Australian parrot, for instance, beak size has increased by between 4% and 10%since 1871. Another study, this time in North American dark-eyed juncos, another bird, found the same pattern..
All that is perfectly consistent with evolutionary (進(jìn)化) theory, "Allen's rule". Allen suggested it in 1877, holding that warm-blooded animals in hot places tend to have larger body parts than those in temperate (溫帶的) regions.Being richly filled with blood vessels (血管), and not covered by feathers, beaks make an ideal place for birds to get rid of heat.
Ms. Ryding examined museum specimens (標(biāo)本) to prove that climate change was the cause of an anatomical (解剖學(xué)的) changes. All sorts of other factors might have been driving the changes. Her team combined data from different species in different places. They have little in common apart from living on a warming planet..
For now, at least, the increase is small, never much more than 10%Since any evolutionary adaptation comes with trade-offs (妥協(xié)), it is unclear how far the process might go.
A. Therefore, climate change is the most reasonable explanation.
B. That may change as warming accelerates (加速).
C. Animals will have to rely on changing their bodies or their behaviors.
D. It seems that the future world is going to be hotter than humans are used to.
E. Therefore, the negative effects of a warmer world are visible in these animals' bodies.
F. Such adaptations boost an animal's surface area relative to its body, helping it to release extra heat.
G. Similar trends are seen in mammals, with species of mice and bats evolving bigger ears, legs and wings.