(CNN) 100 years ago, colorful canaries warned humans of the hidden dangers of coal mining by falling to their deaths riding shotguns down mines.
Well, penguin experts say These Birds Move Like Toddlers in Tuxedos The march shows the hidden dangers of burning coal and other fossil fuels. And as global warming changes the survival of the fittest game at the bottom of the world, one particular species of Antarctic penguin models a poignant lesson for humanity.
Adapt or die…and be quick.
Six species of Antarctic todling aquabats, which number in the millions, are far from extinct. When I stepped onto the Antarctic Peninsula in his early March and drank water in some of the wildest places I’ve ever seen, hundreds were there to make adorable firsts. impression. The colony was teeming with life.
But then I learned that the Southern Ocean, warming by the climate crisis, was turning my little boy’s favorite bird into an Anthropocene sentinel species.Some attempt to find better places by abandoning the nesting sites where their chicks have hatched for thousands of years, but colonies of those who refuse to move collapsed.
Antarctica is home to millions of penguins.
“Unbelievable,” Heather Lynch, an endowed chair in ecology and evolution at Stony Brook University, told CNN. “As ecologists, we know that animals change range over geological time, disappearing in one area and establishing in a new one. But such dynamics occur during a person’s career. I seldom see them.”
Along with seals, seabirds and baleen whales, penguins feed primarily on Antarctic krill. Antarctic krill is a shrimp-like crustacean that thrives on the phytoplankton-like material found beneath sea ice.
Unlike the Arctic, where sea ice is consistently declining, Antarctic sea ice is bobbing. sharp downtrend.
At the end of the southern hemisphere winter in September 2014, 7.7 million square miles The amount of frozen water floating around Antarctica was at a record high, and many species like humpback whales thrived on krill.
But earlier this year, sea ice reached a record low Less than 700,000 square milesbreaking the previous record set last year.
“Once [Celsius] Who cares about temperature changes in temperate environments such as the UK and the US? explained Tom Hart, a lecturer in biology at Oxford Brookes University. But here he makes a big difference in one degree. You can stand on water or you can sink in water. Or whether there is snow cover on the breeding grounds. It’s a completely different habitat. ”
Hart and Lynch say they are using satellites, camera traps, citizen science and AI computing to monitor millions of penguins around Antarctica and see real-time lessons about evolution and adaptation.
Adélie and chinstrap penguins remain stuck in their old-fashioned way of coming out to hell or hot water, while the much more flexible gentoo penguins are migrating further south. And their numbers are exploding as they show willingness to pursue new prey or abandon their nests to increase their chances of long-term survival.
“Gentoo penguins are big winners in climate change in Antarctica,” Lynch said, confirming reports that some colonies in some areas have grown by 30,000 percent. They don’t mind that it’s getting wetter.On the flip side, Adélie and chinstrap penguin populations are cratering in many areas, especially Chinstrap penguin populations are declining, down as much as 80% in some areas.”
As Antarctica’s landscape changes, its iconic penguins are at risk
Gentoo penguins have proven to be more adaptable to climate change.
“Adaptation has several implications,” Hart said. “It means being really tough in harsh environments, but it also means reading the room for seasonality. It means averaging, so if you didn’t do well a year, you gotta do better.” No, and what you really need is to do well one year out of three.”
“I think there’s a lesson here, too,” Lynch said. “Just sticking to what we’ve been doing doesn’t work. Just because Manhattan has always been there, does it make sense that it will be there in 200 or 300 years? I don’t know. But I think we benefit from being flexible and flexible.And I think that’s kind of what Gentoo is telling us.
Adding to concerns that krill crashes could follow ice crashes, bird flu is now present in Chile and Argentina, and Hart will travel with seabirds to the Antarctic Peninsula next spring to wipe out penguin colonies. “I think next year is going to be a terrible year,” he told me. “But we won’t know until it happens.”
These cascading threats also make gentoos an example of humans in the world. The terrifying UN climate report We call them the “hard” and “soft” limits of adaptation. When political or financial hurdles prevent available strategies, it is considered a soft limit. However, if the physical change is too abrupt and severe, there are severe limitations in finding a fix at all.
As I saw during my early March expedition, even the punch-rolling Gentoos struggled after a warm, wet Antarctic triggered snow and rain events that delayed this year’s penguin nesting season by a month. I’m here.
We watched with grim resignation as gentoo couples gathered rocks for their worthless nests and mothers hatched chicks that didn’t have enough time to grow the feathers and fat they needed to survive the winter. rice field. But Lynch reminded me that she had one colony on one island. She believes that a quick change of neighborhood will only shift the timing of having children.
“If the climate changed permanently in a snowy year, I think the gentoo penguins would probably start breeding sooner,” she said. “I think the Gentoo will be fine.”
