How Climate Change is Affecting Animal Migration and Domesticated Pets

From whales to squirrels, the annual travel of many animals in search of suitable climates or breeding grounds, or as obligatory migrants like songbirds, happens: From whales to squirrels, the annual travel of many animals in search of suitable climates or breeding grounds, or as obligatory migrants like songbirds. 

Then, pets of every other species would have health issues because of heat-stroke, cold-stroke, or extreme temperatures. Unprecedented temperatures also alter their food sources.

Despite temperatures changing from year to year, species embark on epic migrations in search of survivorship-they are aided to move from an entry place to warmer or colder areas where food and mates would be found. Though millions of years old, such behavior is now under alteration from climate change; it is changing the cues on which seasons interconnect and criticizes travel:

The melting ice sheets have resulted to polar bears using a smaller range of area to travel and hunt. The retreat of ice sheets leads to reduced search space available for their hunts due to increased predator threats. Fall migration timing in caribou, for example, is dependent on snow and ice temperatures; more melt occurred earlier throughout the last thirty years, causing caribou to progress further into the summer earlier this year.

Some evidence can be found in the tropical forests of South America, where birds and coffee plants are climbing higher as the temperature increases. Malaria has appeared in newer sites in Colombia and Ethiopia via the increasing altitude of infected mosquitoes along with its hosts. Such transformations may over time result in some plants and animals not finding areas with suitable temperatures suitable to continue their survival and become extinct due to climate change.

Water

Migratory species are often found relying on water sources and associated ecosystems for their sustenance. Climate change effects could severely disrupt such systems; to give an example, rising temperatures affect plant growth and thereafter decrease food availability to animals and man, besides altering the quality of water for drinking, bathing, and swimming.

Temperature changes have been associated with increased incidence of pet diseases in indoor pets. Increasing warm temperature makes activity of mosquitoes which transmit heartworm and Lyme disease soar, so that exposure of pets to risk is likely. Plus, the warm climate increases mold and therefore allergies and asthma attacks for humans and pets.

Unlike other animals that need to travel thousands of kilometers in cool temperatures, such animals may either go to another region or adapt to the situation by moving up because they live in mountainous regions that have a thinner atmosphere, which keeps temperatures lower. Moving to either of these places may prove quite taxing for their bodies.

Climate change is bad for animal migration and has been investigated by researchers. The analysis relies on 28 years of tracking studies carried out in the Arctic; data from 28 years of animal tracking studies there found that warmer winter temperatures, earlier snowmelt seasons, and melting ice are significantly altering animal migration patterns. Furthermore, the predator-prey organism pair seems to respond in a different way when in different temperatures: this creates disequilibrium in tightly coupled ecosystems.

Food

Animals, however, will become active and seek food, a condition which holds grave implications for our pets. These insects, which transmit diseases in pets-disease-causing pathogens, such as Lyme disease from ticks and heartworm from mosquitoes and fleas transmitting tapeworm-gradyally join up with the moving temperatures in seasons so as to cover more ground, thus increasing incidence of disease in our pets.

Despite the advances in tracking technology, scientists learn more and more each day about animal migration. Wild songbirds can now be equipped with backpack-style locating devices that track their migrations between breeding grounds. Scientists can then correlate that information with weather, snowfall, and rainfall and topographic maps to determine how changing conditions affect seasonal timing.

Research gives hope to some species. As "nature's alarm clocks" would naturally change with increasing temperatures, their seasonal timing has been disturbed. Fast or slow, they now adjust their timing so that they take only six days leaving home to reach grazing grounds in the American West.

We can, however, help our furry friends reduce the amount of meat they take in. An alternative healthier, diet mostly on fish would emit much lower amounts of climate-warming carbon as compared to producing beef or lamb products. 

Habitat

Because they migrate over very long distances to other geographical areas to meet their feeding and shelter needs, migratory species will be severely affected by environmental change. More often than not, these locations will also be subject to further stress due to anthropogenic actions, aggravated by habitat destruction through pollution and unsustainable hunting or fishing methods or unsustainable off-takes.

Scientists long knew that the climatic changes affect the migratory species. The scientists began to witness earlier breeding and migration cycles and shifts in range toward the poles and a mismatch between breeding activity and the times when prey species are most abundant. 

Some researchers have found common ground showing that some animal species probably adapt relatively more quickly to upheavals in environment. Mule deer at the desert edges in Wyoming face early spring weather conditions, such as snowfall, but still change their travel plans on a timely basis by going to higher elevations. 

This discovery is good as the mule deer and other wildlife may be able to adapt quicker to environmental changes than has been anticipated. However, it is rather unfortunate that such environmental changes could end up being disastrous for more delicate species like migratory birds and mammals, which may be directly affected by the changed environments through altered phenology or shortened migrations and could even stop migration totally if environmental conditions change suddenly and unexpectedly.