Comments on: Will All Animals Shrink Under a Warmer Climate?

By: vanderleun

vanderleun — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 20:24:58 +0000

Yet anøther item to be filed under “Science Made Stupid.”

By: robot makes music

robot makes music — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 06:17:15 +0000

Correlation does not imply causation.

For instance, if the birds are dying younger from the hazards of urban living, they will reproduce younger, and their species size will shrink in stature.

By: Arbitrary Arbiter

Arbitrary Arbiter — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 19:57:47 +0000

Yay Bob.

By: Bob

Bob — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 18:18:00 +0000

Of course this is absolute rubbish once again from scientists paid off by the wall street thugs who are set to have a field day in profits from carbon trading.
If birds are smaller in warmer climates?
Lets look at Tropical birds like Macaws, they are very small aren’t they?
What about Condors and African Vultures?
Eagles that live in the Desert?
Clearly the Scientists who made this lie up should be fired and have their scientific credentials stripped from them.

By: Gareth

Gareth — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 03:58:12 +0000

The difficulty I have with this is that the entire Australian ecosystem has changed since 1860 – Native grasses systematically enhanced with higher nutritional value introduced species, Deforestation, and irrigation are but three. The statement “The scientists found no evidence that the decrease in size was due to nutritional changes among the birds” is surely not sustainable in light of the fact that most native species have had to make dietary adjustments due to the changing face of the Australian eco system since European colonisation.
In the stated case of Sydney bird sizes vs those of Brisbane, Since 1860 Sydney has become the biggest city in the country with a corresponding increase in pollutants and descrease in vegetation. I would be more interested in a correlation of bird size reduction for The two sites and also for a few non-urban sites.

By: amphiox

amphiox — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 01:25:57 +0000

Possible, but that doesn’t factor in the large Eocene mammals like Indricotherium. And the jury’s still out on what kind of metabolism the sauropods and other giant dinosaurs had.

There’s even some evidence of humans getting larger body size during a warm interglacial period some 500 000 years ago or so. (That would be H. erectus, of course, a population that appears to have an average height well over 6 feet during the time period in question, though there remains the good chance that as more fossil evidence comes to light the apparent size discrepancy will turn out to be an artifact)

By: Jumblepudding

Jumblepudding — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 21:10:14 +0000

perhaps warmer climates=larger cold blooded animals, smaller warm blooded animals and vice versa. I wonder if reptiles in Australia have become any larger.

By: amphiox

amphiox — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 20:37:48 +0000

Interesting. But what about the association of vertebrate gigantism in the fossil record, like the titanosaurs of the early Cretaceous, and the giant mammals of the Eocene, and Titanoboa, etc with periods of warmer than average climate?