South Korea · France · Ars Technica
They call it stupid hot for a reason: Heat muddles animal brains
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On a blazing hot day in South Africa, female southern pied babblers can’t think straight.
Key facts
- The risk was 10 percent higher on a 90° F day than on a 60° F day—and not only because people are more apt to venture out for walks when the sun is shining (the researchers controlled for seasonal
- More than 1,600 hours of observations over two summers revealed that when temperatures rose from 54° to 64° F, vegetation grew scarcer, and chamois aggression in turn shot up
- The study authors predict that chamois aggression will go up 50 percent by 2080 due to climate change
- When Baird and colleagues tried to teach bumblebees to associate sweet sucrose with the color blue and bitter quinine with yellow, most of the bumblebees learned the trick at 77°, but fewer than half
Summary
That experiment is part of a growing body of research showing that animals get their minds muddled during heat waves. With climate change making heat waves more common, such cognitive impairments across the animal kingdom could ripple through entire ecosystems, putting already fragile species at greater risk. If pollinators forget which flowers to visit, crops and wild plants may fail. There is plenty of evidence that animals are affected by heat. This way, “They get convective cooling for their brain,” says Emily Baird, a neuroscientist at Stockholm University. Some of the first hints that hot temperatures can mess up minds, however, came from studies on humans. For students at schools without air conditioning, a school year one degree Fahrenheit hotter reduces test scores by 1 percent, a study found.