From Durham University, and the “would you, could you, with a goat” department comes this inanity. They can’t come up with any other explanation, so it must be ‘climate change’. At the rate of observed shrinkage, the goats will be palm sized by the year 2100. Just think of the pet market!
Via Eurekalert:
‘Shrinking goats’ another indicator that climate change affects animal size
Alpine goats appear to be shrinking in size as they react to changes in climate, according to new research from Durham University.
The researchers studied the impacts of changes in temperature on the body size of Alpine Chamois, a species of mountain goat, over the past 30 years.
To their surprise, they discovered that young Chamois now weigh about 25 per cent less than animals of the same age in the 1980s.
In recent years, decreases in body size have been identified in a variety of animal species, and have frequently been linked to the changing climate.
However, the researchers say the decline in size of Chamois observed in this study is striking in its speed and magnitude.
The research, funded by the Natural Environment Research Council is published in the journal Frontiers in Zoology.
Lead author Dr Tom Mason, in the School of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, at Durham University, said: “Body size declines attributed to climate change are widespread in the animal kingdom, with many fish, bird and mammal species getting smaller.
“However the decreases we observe here are astonishing. The impacts on Chamois weight could pose real problems for the survival of these populations.”
The team delved into long-term records of Chamois body weights provided by hunters in the Italian Alps.
IMAGE: This shows a mother and juvenile Chamois in the Italian Alps.
They discovered that the declines were strongly linked to the warming climate in the study region, which became 3-4°C warmer during the 30 years of the study.
To date, most studies have found that animals are getting smaller because the changing climate is reducing the availability or nutritional content of their food.
However, this study found no evidence that the productivity of Alpine meadows grazed by Chamois had been affected by the warming climate. Instead, the team believes that higher temperatures are affecting how chamois behave.
Co-author Dr Stephen Willis, in the School of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, at Durham University, said: “We know that Chamois cope with hot periods by resting more and spending less time searching for food, and this may be restricting their size more than the quality of the vegetation they eat.
“If climate change results in similar behavioural and body mass changes in domestic livestock, this could have impacts on agricultural productivity in coming decades.”
According to the authors, the future plight of the Chamois remains unclear.
Dr Philip Stephens, another co-author on the study, in the School of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, at Durham University, said: “The body mass of juvenile animals is critical to their ability to survive harsh winters.
“However, whether that becomes a problem will depend on the balance of future climate change between the seasons.”
The research suggests that declining body size is a result of changes in both climate and the density of animals.
To counter declining body size in future, the researchers say it might be necessary to maintain Chamois populations at lower densities than occur at present, perhaps through changes in hunting regulations.
Dr Mason added: “This study shows the striking, unforeseen impacts that climate change can have on animal populations.
“It is vital that we continue to study how climate change affects species such as Chamois. Changes in body size could act as early-warning systems for worse impacts to come, such as the collapses of populations.”
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so the winters are just as bad as ever!! – no change there then.
“The body mass of juvenile animals is critical to their ability to survive HARSH WINTERS” –
Hey Mr. Scientist, stop that research and let’s play “The Game of Science”. Here’s how.
It’s like the Six Degree of Kevin Bacon game except you replace Kevin with Global Warming, then make connections from it and any observed anomaly.
The latest entry, shrinking goats! Remember, all winners receive grant money.
As usual the migratory birds started visiting South Indian Lakes.
Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy
Based on measurements taken when he was 3 to 8 years old, my son should have been 18 feet tall when he turned 18.
Weren’t there pygmy goats long ago?
Might not smaller juveniles grow to smaller adults, better able to survive on less food?
Goats are in some places not in others. For example, on Olympic peninsula in WA state but not on Vancouver Island (perhaps introduced on Olympic peninsula not native), so Coast Salish blanket weavers traded goat hair for the dog hair that Coast Salish in BC bred.
continuing…. BadPress hid my Duckin-Grinnin-Runnin line.
“lector” may have a point, some children start small – it is claimed that babies of Asian genetics tend to even when they grow to average size later. But I suppose that’s like different breeds of goats – humans vary in colour, shape/size, amount of hair and location.
I’m recalling flapping over smaller size of some sea critters off of the west coast of Mexico a few years ago.
Turned out that due to water temperature _shifts_ their favoured food had moved further out to sea.
So those who stayed in the traditional location did not get as much food for energy expended and did not grow as large, but those who figured out where there now were more of the food prospered in size.
Which reminds me of what a ranger from the Tongas National Forest told me about deer and wolves. Most deer aren’t very adventurous, they won’t relocate far. (Except some into urban areas, apparently. Deer do have ability to defend themselves, very agile, sharp hooves, and antlers on males. As a wolf descendant learned in Oak Bay BC last week – a dog received gashes several inches long. Elsewhere earlier a woman was gashed when she laid on top of her lap-mutts to protect them from a deer in her front yard.)
And somewhat less of a parallel, there’s gray whales who have difficulty getting ample food due to ice in the Bering sea, the only place they feed traditionally. But the species will survive because a few hundred feed on the coast of BC and a few thousand skip the commute and stay off of OR all year.
And environmentalist flapping about the future of the “resident” orca pods in the Puget Sound/Vancouver Island area, who I consider Darwin Candidates. In the news because a calf disappeared – but a Vancouver BC aquarium expert pointed out that orca mortality is 30% in the first year of life. They prefer salmon, supposedly a particular variety of salmon, which have not been plentiful in recent years.
(This year there are many more returning to spawn so we’ll see if that has an effect on orca population. Some of the low populations may be due to less rain into southern Vancouver Island rivers at spawning time in recent years. You can easily guess what environmentalists blame that on Actually, some environmentalist claims are odd – Pacific salmon are only in the area at spawning time, they mature out in the ocean somewhere. So the salmon can only be part of their diet, perhaps an important part approaching winter when fish may be less common.)
Oh, it’s been revealed that those orcas are actually “snowbirds”, they reside somewhere else for several months of the year, IIRC south, though Pacific herring spawn in January through April and recent populations have been more to the north – wannah bet food is involved? Gosh, maybe they’ll adopt food practices of the more successful “transient” population, who roam around and eat seals and such, even the odd deer they catch swimming between islands. (Yes, deer can swim fine, but probably don’t understand about orcas, they haven’t heard the term “killer whale”. Orcas even kill big mean sharks, probably they are smarter than sharks.)
As for geese not migrating from the Arctic, I’d want to see reproduction data for a few years.
Critters can make mistakes.
A couple of years ago some pelicans neglected to get out of the Winterpeg area before freezeup. Kind humans flew surviving ones to a bird rehab operation in the Victoria BC area. One survived, behaved very happy when it was healthy enough to put into their pool.
I do not know what happened to the Canada geese I saw one winter in a park in Cedar Rapids IA. Weather there can be misleading for part of a winter then turn nasty with much snow.
So I went to Frontiers of Zoology and read the paper. I downloaded “Additional File 1” where all of the 10,455 chamois were cataloged and found that the total number was only 9,388 chamois…a difference of 11.37%.
Were are the missing chamois?
Indeed!!! And the sheer body mass of the 1,067 missing ungulates has (and will) cause the oceans to rise…exponentially.
This is a serious question though…why didn’t the researches, the reviewers, nor anyone else catch this discrepancy? Over 11% of stated data is disappeared…for what reason?