Posted on 03/12/2010 10:55:45 AM PST by NormsRevenge
Songbirds in the US are getting smaller, and climate change is suspected as the cause.
A study of almost half a million birds, belonging to over 100 species, shows that many are gradually becoming lighter and growing shorter wings.
This shrinkage has occurred within just half a century, with the birds thought to be evolving into a smaller size in response to warmer temperatures.
However, there is little evidence that the change is harmful to the birds.
Details of the discovery are published in the journal Oikos.
In biology, there is a general rule of thumb that animals tend to become smaller in warmer climates: an idea known as Bergman's Rule.
Usually this trend can be seen among animal species that live over a range of latitude or altitude, with individuals living at more northern latitudes or higher up cooler mountains being slightly larger than those below, for example.
Quite why this happens is not clear, but it prompted one group of scientists to ask the question: would animals respond in the same way to climate change?
To find out, Dr Josh Van Buskirk of the University of Zurich, Switzerland and colleagues Mr Robert Mulvihill and Mr Robert Leberman of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Rector, Pennsylvania, US decided to evaluate the sizes of hundreds of thousands of birds that pass through the Carnegie Museum's Powdermill ringing station, also in Pennsylvania.
They examined the records of 486,000 individual birds that had been caught and measured at the ringing station from 1961 to 2007.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.bbc.co.uk ...
Drink spew alert!!!!
I’m sure they’re right but i always thought warm= greater size due to among other things,more food.
Climate change ‘makes birds shrink’ in North America shortly after a previous climate change made them shrink from dinosaurs...
That's a premise easily disproven by McDonalds' rule. I live in a warm climate (southern CA) and when I'm eating McDonalds burgers in my parked car I'm besieged by flocks of pot-bellied sparrows and seagulls begging French fries and other greasy morsels. Some of those birds are getting hugh!
So the birds are losing some of their obesity.
You would think that would make liberals happy. Especially Michelle Obama.
Now, if she could just get ‘the children’ to eat like birds.
Seems that snowbirds are getting bigger to
The fraud and dishonesty just keep on coming... (see words in caps below)
Headline:
“Climate change ‘MAKES birds shrink’ in North America”
In the article...
“Songbirds in the US are getting smaller, and climate change is SUSPECTED as the cause.”
And they have the audacity to call this crap science?!!
What I SUSPECT is that the people that did this so-called study that arrived at this “conclusion” are bird brains. And I’m more confident of my conclusion than of theirs.
Then explain dinosaurs.
They would say, "It is so obvious! Dinosaurs don't have thumbs!"
"For a 10g warbler that's a loss of just 130mg."
Yeah, but did they account for the bird's "Poopy time".
“The Medieval Warm Period”
They’ve now calling it the Medieval Warm Anomaly. And back in the Jurassic Era, hummingbirds were as big as semi trucks.
Antropogenic Global Warming, a turdly serious problem, according to the infallible AlGore, history’s greatest scientist, by far surpassinmg Newton and Einstein, also, as I have irrefutabley detemined, causes flatulence and hemorroids. We all know that people from warm countries, like Mexico, indulge in HOT foods, which invariably cause flatulence (beans, as in “Blazing Saddles”) and hemoroids. Hence, as it warms, we will all begin eating hotter foods, thereby falling victims to those two horrible, odious ailments.
Global warming causes the hypothalamus to not be able to reduce core body temperatures adequately, so the warmer blood causes their brains to swell, putting increased pressure upon the prefrontal cortex, resulting in mass delusions, and the loss of 8.736% of IQ/decade.
Would you like to see something else that shrinks over time?
LOL! And staying longer, too. ;-)
Hummingbirds were ostriches when they hatched.
“Anomaly” just means “deviation from average”, don’t be tricked into the concept that “anomaly” means something wrong or out of kilter. The Warmists have used the scientific term freely, because the colloquial term means “wrong” or bad.
Yes, many hummingbird fossils have been misidentified as pterodactyls.
I looked at my old grocery receipts from 1973, the beginning of the Ice Age. Today, a “fryer” chicken is three pounds. Back then it was five. Tuna has been getting smaller too- back then, an eight-ounce can cost $0.70, but now the can is 6.2 oz and costs over $2, clearly global warming related. jens, though, have gotten bigger. My 1973 jeans, with embroidery on the bell part, are smaller than the straight-leg jeans I have now.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.