Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Which animals are most vulnerable to climate change?

Ever-increasing climate change impact will no doubt have tremendous negative effect on many animal species but some animals are more vulnerable to climate change than the rest of the animal world. Which animals are considered by scientists to be the most vulnerable of them all?

Some would say climate change will mostly affect animals in polar areas because of ice melting, the other would say the animals that live in tropic areas will be the ones mostly exposed to climate change because they have adapted to a life where temperatures are pretty much stable all the time.

The latest interesting study that deals with this question has come from the Durham University's School of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, and the lead author of this study Dr Phillip Stephens, believes that large predators such as polar bears and tigers will be the ones most affected by climate change.

He explains this by saying that climate change will cause pray to become scarce, and once there is not enough prey, large predators are the ones that suffer the most because they need lot of meal, and finding enough meal in times when pray is scarce is anything but easy.

In fact, several other studies have showed that large predator populations decreased five to six times more than those of their smaller predators when prey was rare.

Large predators such as tigers and polar bears are known to be extremely sensitive to any serious environmental change, and climate change is certainly looking as the most serious environmental change of them all. Animals which will fail to adapt to climate change will perish from the face of the Earth, and large predators will certainly find it hard to adapt.

This is the reason why entire world will have to increase its conservation efforts, and do everything to preserve habitats where large predators roam in search for prey. If we fail to address this issue, in future not far away, there won't be large carnivores left in the wild.

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