A recent study by Bournemouth University (BU) and the Wight Squirrel Project shows that red squirrels in Europe are coping with global warming better than specialists had anticipated.

The research, led by conservation biologist Alyson Buchanan from Boston University, used various climate models to test how European red squirrels would cope in different climate scenarios and analyzed the factors that can influence their food supply and habitat, such as changes in temperature and precipitation.

How do red squirrels adapted to invaders

Although they have been seen as a fragile species in the face of climate change and competition from the grey squirrel, European red squirrels show that they can naturally adapt to climate and habitat use, which gives them an advantage in high-temperature conditions.

This can be seen especially in the UK, where grey squirrels, a species introduced from the USA, have almost completely displaced red squirrels from most areas, according to EuroNews.

Even so, the red squirrels have adapted and migrated to the Isle of Wight, which remains one of the few places preventing grey squirrels from entering due to its geographical isolation. The study observed that red squirrel populations can live easily in regions exposed to accelerated warming, as long as they have enough food resources and shelter.

Based on these findings, we wondered how other animals cope with these constant climate changes, how complex such a process is, and how different their adaptation methods can be.

So, here’s a short list, put together by the green.start-up.ro team.

Clownfish

The clownfish, another species considered vulnerable to ocean acidification and rising sea temperatures, has in some cases shown unexpected adaptive abilities, maintaining its social behaviors and reproductive cycles.

According to the BBC, a new study showed that clownfish shrink to cope with marine heatwaves. The research discovered that clownfish living on coral reefs thinned drastically when ocean temperatures suddenly rose in 2023. Scientists studied pairs of clownfish living on reefs in Kimbe Bay, Papua New Guinea, which is an extreme hotspot for marine biodiversity.

The study took place in the summer of 2023, when ocean temperatures spiked, leading to widespread coral bleaching, and found that not only did the fish lose weight, but 75% of them also shortened by several millimeters.

Octopuses

The ability to be flexible helps a system adapt in real time, without the need to add new elements, and octopuses demonstrate extraordinary flexibility.

These marine creatures are capable of changing their behavior and body shape depending on different environments, and they can alter their skin color and texture to blend into various backgrounds, which helps them avoid predators or approach prey unnoticed.

Interesting enough, according to LiveScience, octopuses adapt by rewriting their brain connections to adapt to ocean temperature fluctuations. Practically, their brain gets a reset button, which they can use to adapt more easily.

This happens because octopuses and other cephalopods are cold-blooded animals, which means they cannot internally regulate their body temperature. As a result, they are vulnerable to external water temperatures, which can threaten the brain functions of these highly intelligent creatures if the water becomes too cold or too hot.

To prevent this, California two-spot octopuses edit their RNA (the molecule between DNA and proteins) to produce different neural proteins in response to temperature variations.

Mountain goats

Mountain goats can adapt to climate changes fairly easily, since they can literally climb rocks to find food, as well as to flee from predators. The fact that they are active animals allows them to adapt to climate changes easier in order to find food, but also shelter.

Their ability to easily climb mountains allows them to climb down in order to seek food around forests or grass areas, but also to get to higher altitudes in order to find shelter or cooler places, if the situation demands it. This is important in the context of mountain losing on their ice and snow and their ability to store precipitations in such a way, as the atmosphere becomes hotter.

At the same time, in order to avoid high thermal stress, goats might start looking for food whenever the sun isn't shining bright during the day. So, these animals might become more nocturnal in the future.

One challenge the mountain goats might face in the uncertain climate future is related to the way plants grow and bloom, which could disturb goats' migration patterns.

Kodiak Bear

The Kodiak Bear inhabits the Kodiak Archipelago in Alaska and its diet consists of salmon and berries, generally. The animal's feeding patterns are particularly important right before the hibernation season, when its activity is significantly reduced.

How are Kodiak bears affected by climate change? Indirectly, by the changes that happen when salmon migrates for breeding, as well as by the moment berries emerge in the forests.

In the past, bears used to know the time-frame differences between these two moments, but with time, they started overlapping. Thus, currently, researchers noticed that bears started to lose interest in catching fish during the optimal season, as they are attracted to an easier-to-obtain food, forest fruits.

This affects the way bears accumulate body fat for the cold season, as according to The Week, "brown bears that consume about 17% in their diet, accumulate more weight compared to those who eat more or less protein."

And evidently, fish contains more protein than forest fruits. Still, there is a fruit that grows in the Kodiak Archipelago and which enables Kodiak bears to have a more balanced diet, with proteins at an almost optimal level, red elderberries.

Red elderberries contain about 13% protein, which offers bears almost the ideal share of protein, even with meat missing from occasional meals. Still, climate change could potentially affect the way these plants grow, which could bring changes to the Kodiak bears' lifestyle.

Pink salmon

Pink salmon is a species that heavily depends on migration to survive and over the past couple of decades, these fish changed their migration patterns to ensure their survival.

Researchers noticed this between 1982 and 2011, when they conducted annual studies and discovered that lazier fish, which migrated due to various reasons later in the season, only accounted for 10% of the population that ended up surviving. On the other side, salmon that migrated 2 weeks earlier compared to 40 years ago has more chances of survival.

The change in the migration behavior of fish is generated mostly by the change in water temperature, which grew by one degree Celsius following climate change.

Because they changed the migration time frame, salmon populations from Auke Creek, Alaska, remained relatively similar to those from 4 decades ago.

Tawny Owl

The tawny owl is a small nocturnal predator common in Europe's temperate areas, specific to plains, whose color varies from brown to a reddish shade, depending on the amount of pheomelanin (each bird's pigment), whether it's male or female. Regarding their natural habitat, it grew due to milder winters in the past 28 years in Finland, which made it so that populations of tawny owls grew in the country. At the same time, the population of brown owls, a related species, grew itself nation-wide in the past almost 50 years.

It's not just the milder climate conditions that contributed to the expansion of the birds' habitat, but also the lack of snow, which allowed birds to camouflage better and to become better hunters.

Stork

The stork is a common bird in the aerial landscape of Romania and European countries, in general, because it lives in nests built close to human settlements. Due to climate change, storks have adapted their migration and breeding time-frames in order to ensure better survival.

When winters are milder, they become more and more sedentary and breed quicker, in order to adapt to early springs. What's interesting is that, in this context, baby storks retain their migratory genes, so once they are capable, they start migrating to Africa, only to come back 3-4 years later to the place they left from to start a family.

This shows that, despite being influenced by climate change, these birds didn't forget their origins and keep their generational traditions, adapting to the weather each year.

These are just some of the species that adapted to climate change in innovative ways. For now, they have found ways to survive in the context of the continuously changing climate, but future extreme weather events and more noticeable temperature changes could pose a danger for them.

It's our duty to protect them and to change our consumption habits in order to ensure they have the best survival chances, so that we can enjoy the beauty of nature and healthy ecosystems.

If you want to learn more about what happens to other species of animals, biodiversity and technologies that help with protecting animals, you can read these articles.