Animals are shrinking. Blame climate change.
Last edited Tue Jul 6, 2021, 11:54 PM - Edit history (1)
Many birds, mammals, and fish seem to get smaller as the temperature rises.
By Benji Jones@BenjiSJones Jul 6, 2021, 8:30am EDT
https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/CHsxGGXxsd9ZkvVqwTBiueT5thc=/0x1159:2932x3487/920x613/filters:focal(1211x2042:1679x2510):format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/69545082/Drawer_of_birds_in_FM_collections___c__Field_Museum__Ben_Marks.0.jpg
This story is part of Down to Earth, a Vox reporting initiative on the science, politics, and economics of the biodiversity crisis.
One fall morning in 1978, David Willard, an ornithologist at the Field Museum in Chicago, walked to the nearby McCormick Place convention center — a hulking structure along Lake Michigan — to look for dead birds. He’d received a tip that birds were crashing into the building’s many windows on their journey south.
He found a few birds lifeless on the concrete that morning. And as any good scientist might do, he brought them back to the museum to measure them and store the winged creatures in the museum’s collection. His curiosity piqued, he returned to McCormick Place the next morning. He found still more birds and brought them, too, back to the museum.
Four decades later, Willard has helped collect more than 100,000 birds from window collisions in Chicago, with help from other scientists and volunteers. They now make up a stunning 20 percent of the museum’s ornithology collection.
https://www.vox.com/22558979/animals-birds-shrinking-size-heat-climate-change
Literally the canary in the coal mine....
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