Hot Great Tit Chicks Get Laid Quicker

I’m sorry. I couldn’t resist. Note to porn hunters: I’m talking about birds, and not the Benny Hill kind of “birds”.

The bird is actually named the great tit, and it’s common in England, where a new study gives some reassurance that some animals with short generation spans, like songbirds, may be able to adjust well to global warming.

A team led by Anne Charmantier of Oxford found that a population of great tits has shifted the timing of its egg laying by two weeks. The change was made to match the timing of a caterpillar hatch. The caterpillars are fed to the baby great tits, but have been hatching earlier because of climate change.

The best news in the study is that there appears to have been not very much chick death during the period of adjustment.

That represents the best hope we have as global warming accelerates: Life is flexible.

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