氣候變化導致動物變形

貴州 羅躍梅

一項新的研究顯示，一些恒溫動物正在進化出更大的耳朵、喙和腿，以適應全球變暖。

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1Humans in many parts of the world are having to adjust to climate change, but it appears that animals are having to adapt,too.

2According to a new study,some warm-blooded animals like birds are evolving (進 化) larger ears, beaks (喙) and legs in order to shed extra body heat as the planet gets hotter.

3“It's high time we recognized that animals have to adapt to these changes, but this is occurring over a far shorter timescale than would have occurred through most of evolutionary time,”said co-author Sara Ryding,a bird researcher.

4“Climate change is heaping a whole lot of pressure on them, and while some species will adapt,others will not,”Ryding added.

5According to a biological theory called“Allen's rule”, animals in warmer climates have longer limbs (四肢) than animals that live in cooler climates. As animals in cold regions need to preserve as much heat as possible,they have lower surface-area-to-volume ratios in order to minimise the surface area to lose heat. The reverse is true for animals in warmer climates.Those animals have higher surface-area-to-volume ratios so they can lose excess heat as easily as possible.

6Ryding said that climate change is a complex phenomenon, with many different factors that have been occurring progressively,so it is difficult to pinpoint exactly the cause of the shapeshifting. But these changes have been seen across a wide range of regions, habitats and species,so there is little evidence to connect them except for climate change.

7Shapeshifting has been particularly widely reported in birds. Several species of Australian parrots have shown an increase in beak size of between 4 per cent and 10 per cent since 1871.

8For the next part of the project,the researchers are going to carry out 3D scans of museum specimens from the past 100 years, to better understand which birds are changing size due to climate change.

9“Shapeshifting does not mean that animals are coping with climate change and that all is fine,”said Ryding.“It just means they are evolving to survive it—but we're not sure what the other ecological consequences of these changes are.”

Reading Check

Choose the best answers according to the text

Language Study

Ⅰ.Analyze the difficult sentence in the text

“It's high time we recognized that animals have to adapt to these changes, but this is occurring over a far shorter timescale than would have occurred through most of evolutionary time,”said co-author Sara Ryding,a bird researcher.“現在我們是時候認識到動物必須適應這些氣候變化了，但這個進化發生的時間比大多數進化本應耗費的時間短得多。”合著者、鳥類研究員薩拉·呂丁說。

【點石成金】本句是一個主從復合句，引號內為直接引語，作動詞said的賓語。It's high time(that)...意為“是……的時候了”；that animals have to adapt to...是賓語從句，作recognized的賓語；but連接前后兩個并列分句。

Ⅱ.Memorize some text-centered chunks

adjust to 適應

according to 根據

as...as possible 盡可能

a wide range of 各種各樣的；大范圍的

carry out 實施；執行；實行

due to 由于

cope with 處理；應對