Scholars at Deakin University in Australia have continued to study a variety of animals and found that as the earth becomes hotter and hotter, many warm-blooded animals are "deforming", such as evolving larger beaks, ears and legs, which means that the number of superficial capillaries will be more numerous, blood flow will be more abundant, and the expansion of capillaries is one of the main forms of heat dissipation, and their location is shallow, which is easier to dissipate heat through radiation.
Studies have pointed out that the beak of birds and the appendages of mammals such as ears (rich in blood vessels) can help dispel excess heat in the body; in warmer places, thermostatic animals themselves tend to grow larger accessory limbs and other organs, such as elephants living in the tropics, subtropics, their ears are large, which can help elephants dissipate heat; species such as the Tasmanian shrew living in Australia have large ears.
Small animals generally have a shorter lifespan, because small size means that the body surface area is larger than the opposite, and animals need to metabolize more rapidly to maintain body temperature, which leads to more damage accumulated in genes, cells, etc. Therefore, it is easier to track the body shape changes of small animals, and 3 generations can be traced in 5 years, so changes in a certain organ of the organism can be found more quickly. Scientists have found that wood rats have grown longer tails, while shrews have grown larger tails and legs. It has also been found that bats have larger ears, tails, legs and wings as the climate warms.
Scientists have found that some species have seen up to 10 percent variation in the size of their appendages, and that this change is expected to become more pronounced as the planet warms further. This change also began to appear in the modern era when the climate began to warm, that is to say, animals are not what we see without change, but the average person lacks research, it is difficult to find the changes just by appearance, and because of the lack of contrast, even if it is felt that one of the organs of the animal is larger, it is difficult to detect.
In times of drastic environmental change, it is also an era when organisms are under greater pressure to survive, during which the evolution of organisms accelerates, which leads to faster appearance or genetic level of organisms to show the results of evolution. Today, in an era of intense environmental change, global warming leads to the redistribution of land precipitation, and abnormal sea and surface temperatures will lead to greater obstacles to the survival of organisms in the region. Therefore, it will promote the evolution of organisms in a more suitable environment, but the evolutionary results are not uniform.
Global warming may be a transitional phase in the Ice Age, when due to the increase in the concentration of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere (including anthropogenic emissions and natural emissions, it is difficult to determine which is the main cause), the sun is partially light-back reflected when it hits the earth, and part of the energy is absorbed and then radiated out in the form of infrared rays. Greenhouse gases retain more ground reflection and radiation energy, resulting in an increase in the temperature of the surface atmosphere.
This is an unexpected change, and previous research on animal body size has focused on the size of the organism as a whole, such as today's insects and prehistoric giant insects, which of course have to start with environmental factors. So the scientists analyzed that the era of giant insects and the current insect living environment are mainly different in two aspects: one is that the plant is more abundant, can provide more food for the insects at the bottom, and becomes larger under the influence of the survival pressure of prey; the other is the insect's open breathing mode and atmospheric oxygen content.
The study is more specific to the characteristics of organisms in terms of thermal adaptability, as the temperature rises, thermostatic animals are encountering huge problems, because most mammals and birds can not produce sweat glands, nor can they use air conditioning. So there are two main directions in evolution, one is to escape the hot environment, which has become a reality, grizzly bears are more inclined to run near the Arctic Circle, and marine life in the sea near the equator migrates to the direction of the Earth's poles due to the increase in sea temperature.
The other is that traits that are more adaptable to nature are selected as the population of the species changes. This change can be very rapid, African elephants originally had huge tusks, but modern humans hunt elephants to seize tusks efficiently, the number of African elephants has decreased sharply, under the survival pressure of human choice, today's elephants tend not to grow tusks, which can avoid hunting.
In short, for organisms, the evolutionary process will not stop, in today's global climate is a relatively rapid change is the era, the evolution of organisms can be more clearly displayed in front of us.