animation gif
Impacts of Climate Change on Animals
Sarthak Mishra
Content Writer @ Earth Root Foundation, New Delhi
(Published on: 25 November, 2021 @09 PM)

Around the globe there are many different kinds of biomes. Places where the climate, the average weather over time, defines what kinds of plants and animals can live there. Humans somehow manages their livelihood. It is difficult for plants and animals to adapt new things. For plants and animals things are not that easy they live in particular biomes because they are best adaptive to the weather, soil and day length found in those places.

Humans are shaping environments at an accelerating rate. This rate brought by humans has the greatest impact on the animals’ activity in exploring their environment. Capacity of animals to adapt human-induced environmental change and how that change affects the expression of animal traits.

Climate Change effecting animals all over the world. Every added degree of temperature has its own consequences. Due to climate change the vegetation in large areas of the earth changes and with it the food the animals live on. Researchers calculated that on average species move towards north and south poles or climb higher in the mountains in every ten years searching for cooler places to live. They look for new habitats that are as similar as possible to their old ones.

Recently, a data collected on one hundred animal species, researchers from the University of Helsinki and Lancaster University studied which behavioral traits are the most sensitive to human-induced environmental change, and to which human-induced changes in the environment animals respond the most sensitively. This study includes animals from the largest to the smallest groups of organisms which have fishes, birds, crustaceans and mammals. In addition, insects, amphibians and lizards were also represented.

The biggest change was seen in the animal’s activity in exploring their environment. Animals have a strong response to all forms of environmental change, but climate change engendered the greatest change in animal behavior. Behavioral change can serve as a buffer with which animals avoid the immediate negative effects of environmental change.

Animals that migrate north to breed are being put at risk by ongoing climate change and increasing human pressure, losing earlier advantages for migration, declining in numbers and faring much worse than their resident counterparts. Whilst some animals might shift their breeding ranges slightly further north to compensate for the change in environmental conditions, migratory animals are hardwired to continue the dangerous trip each year to breed, despite the lack of benefit.

It is the high time that we can realize humanity cannot exist in isolation. These changes in the behavior, migration and genetics are in turn effecting the normal life of animals and thus of the whole ecosystem.

To volunteer for small initiative in protecting mother earth please participate here.
Thank You !

Become a volunteer