Scientists say baby sharks are at risk of being born smaller and without the energy they need to survive because of warming oceans from climate change.

Scientists studied epaulette sharks, which live off Australia and New Guinea. They found that warmer conditions expedite the sharks’ growing process. That meant the sharks were born earlier and very tired. The findings could be used in the study of other sharks, including those that give birth to live young.

The scientists studied 27 sharks. Some were raised in average summer water temperatures, about27 degrees Celsius. Others were raised in higher temperatures around 29 degrees Celsius and 31 degrees Celsius. They found that the sharks raised in the warmest temperatures weighed much less than those raised in average temperatures. They also showed reduced energy levels.

Epaulette sharks can grow to a length of about one meter. Their name comes from large spots on their bodies that look like decorations on some military clothing.

One study this year found that worldwide numbers of oceanic sharks and rays dropped more than70 percent between 1970 and 2018. Overfishing is a main concern, while climate change and pollution also threaten sharks.

Carolyn Wheeler is a doctoral student at the University of Massachusetts Boston and with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University in Australia. She is the lead author of the epaulette shark study. She said that while all the sharks survived, those raised in warmer temperatures were not strong enough to survive for long in the wild.

She added that if the sharks are born smaller than usual, they are probably going to have to start looking for food sooner, and they’re going to have less time to adjust to their surroundings.

The study should serve as a warning to ocean governing agencies that careful management is needed to prevent the loss of more sharks.

Most of us are familiar with Groundhog Day, wherein a large groundhog checks to see its shadow on February 2 and helps to predict when winter will end. But have you ever heard about how a mountain town in North Carolina uses a caterpillar (毛毛虫) known as the Woolly Worm to make similar predictions?

According to the folklore (民间传说), the amount of black on the woolly worm in autumn predicts the severity of the upcoming winter. The longer the woolly worm’s black bands (带) are, the longer, colder, snowier, and more severe the winter will be. Similarly, a wider middle brown band is associated with a milder upcoming winter. The position of the longest dark bands supposedly indicates which part of winter will be coldest or hardest. If the head end of the caterpillar is dark, the beginning of winter will be severe. If the tail end is dark, the end of winter will be cold. In addition, the woolly worm caterpillar has 13 segments to its body, which traditional forecasters say correspond to the 13 weeks of winter.

Scientific studies on worm forecasting are few and far between. The most often cited is a small trial that American Museum of Natural History entomologist Howard Curran conducted in 1948. Having heard about the caterpillar folklore, Curran traveled to Bear Mountain State Park to collect woolly worms each fall for eight years. He found that if the worms had brown markings on more than a third of their body, winters tended to be milder.

Most scientists discount the folklore of caterpillar predictions as just a folklore. “It’s a wonderful story, but I do think it was a playful trial,” says Joe Boggs, an entomologist at Ohio State University Extension who has studied woolly worms. “Curran was a real scientist. He had a bunch of papers published, but he never published this one—probably because he knew it wouldn’t stand up to peer review.”

Mike Peters, an entomologist at the University of Massachusetts, doesn’t disagree, but he says there could be a link between the band of a woolly worm and the severity of winter. Peters suggests that the timing of their growth and environmental conditions, such as temperature, moisture levels, and food sources, can impact the appearance of woolly worms, including their size, coloration, and band patterns. By analyzing these characteristics, researchers can potentially infer information about the weather conditions. “The band does say something about a heavy winter,” he says. “The only thing is that it’s telling you about the previous year.”

If it weren’t for passionate people, this would be a dull world indeed.

Peter Cavanagh, of Lopez Island, certainly qualifies in the passionate category, having taken 600, 000 pictures of birds all over the world in the past 13 years. Cavanagh, 73, is a retired professor in the University of Washington. He minored in math and is an instrument-rated pilot. His pictures mostly capture birds in flight, not on a perch (栖息).

“I have a sense of wonder at flight because it is the most highly complex form of movement in the entire animal kingdom,” says Cavanagh. “Humans have spent more than six centuries trying to imitate bird flight but still have not produced flying machines with all of the complexity, flexibility and performance that is commonplace for birds.” For birds, the math of it all just happens. A small bird such as the American kestrel, the smallest falcon (猎鹰) in our region at about 4 ounces, sits and waits for prey.

Meanwhile, to achieve fight, a 90-ton commercial jet is filled with electronics and computer systems. “Birds have flying abilities we have not come close to matching in airplanes,” says Cavanagh. The Royal Aeronautical Society in London, in a January 2021 posting, told how researchers at the University of Denmark did computer design of a Boeing 777 wing based on a bird’s wings. It was 5% lighter, which matters in fuel costs. In 2019, Airbus produced a “Bird of Prey” design that mimicked the eagle’s wing and tail structure for flight control.

Cavanagh enjoys every minute of waiting, and waiting, and waiting, starting at sunrise to capture those images. “I am happiest in truly wild places where the human is a tolerated guest and they are the world of wild animals.”