Rising Global Temperatures Cooking Lots of Lizards

ABC ^ | Thursday, 13 May 2010 | RANDOLPH E. SCHMID

[Willie Green]

Lots of leapin' lizards living no longer; researchers say global warming threatens reptiles

Sometimes it can be too darn hot even for a lizard.

Cold-blooded creatures that have to soak up the rays to get going might seem like the last animals you would expect to be threatened by global warming.

Well, you would be wrong, researchers say.

It turns out lizards are going extinct in many places, and scientists who have studied them say it's because of rising temperatures. The heats affects reproduction.

"The results were clear. These lizards need to bask in the sun to warm up, but if it gets too hot they have to retreat into the shade, and then they can't hunt for food," said Barry Sinervo of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

He said he was "stunned and saddened" by the finding, reported in Friday's edition of the journal Science.

[Dr. Bogus Pachysandra]

Can you photoshop Al oGre’s head onto that thing?

[Daffynition]

[Citizen Tom Paine]

Apparently, following this line of reasoning, there were NO lizards in the Cretaceous about 60 million years ago because the temperatures were much higher then.

[UB355]

Once ubiquitous, Florida’s brown lizards scarce after cold winter

http://www.tampabay.com/news/environment/wildlife/once-ubiquitous-floridas-brown-lizards-scarce-after-cold-winter/1087157

[edh]

Nice iguana pic.

Just curious, are any Keys Freepers reading this? How are the iguana populations doing down there :-)!? I’m heading down at the end of June. It’d be nice to not see those bastards everywhere :-)! I know the islanders hate them :-)!

[colorado tanker]

Yep, it was a cold winter in Florida, by their standards anyhow.

Wouldn't bother me if a hard freeze hit the Everglades and got rid of some of the invasive species taking hold down there. Some scary stuff in there.

[colorado tanker]

LOL!

[driftdiver]

Good idea but my photoshot skills aren’t good enough.

[RedMDer]

[Red Badger]

I saw a report on TV back then that one park ranger found about a dozen dead or dying pythons in one day!..............

[Daffynition]

[Red Badger]

How does one conduct a census of lizard population? What a silly question. You mail them a form, of course!

And if they don't return the form, you send out an army of obamabots to count them and see how many have mortgages from evil Wall Street bankers!............

[Buckeye McFrog]

Andrew Zimmern should be able to get half a season’s worth of shows out of this...

[driftdiver]

I live in Tampa and we don’t have any iguana running wild here. I know a lot of the iguanas were killed, probably not all.

[reagan_fanatic]

[Zionist Conspirator]

Oops. We'd better set up a planetary totalitarian regime ASAP to save meaningless lizards on a meaningless speck of dust somewhere in the vastness of a meaningless universe.

Isn't that the obvious solution?

[chopperman]

He’s half lizard, half weasel. He’s a weasel lizard.

[MestaMachine]

Go to the nearest truck stop.

[expatpat]

If they looked a little further north (in the N. Hemisphere) of the prior habitat, they would find the missing lizards.

The warmists don't seem to realize that fauna and flora readily adapt to slow changes, moving to maintain optimum local conditions. They should read Darwin.

[Nervous Tick]

>> Or cut it vertically along the axis of the tail to make circular steaks.

The alligator must be dead for this step, yes? :-)