How does global warming affect animals?

There is no doubt whatsoever that global warming is affecting the whole planet. Climate change is forcing every living creature on our planet to adapt to climate change. As the global warming impact becomes stronger and stronger, animals find it more and more difficult to adapt. And the worst thing is that this is only a start of something that will become much worse in years to come. Changed weather conditions and more frequent extreme weather events will cause many animals to go extinct.

Many people mostly connect global warming with ice melting and polar bears. Sadly polar bears are not the only animals affected with global warming. Global warming isn't only affecting polar regions but the whole planet. Yes, Arctic is really rapidly melting making polar bears survival very questionable, but thousands of other animal species are struggling as well.

Many scientists believe how global warming will not have the worst impact on animals that live in polar regions but on the ones that live in tropics. Many tropical animal species are at great jeopardy of going extinct even with the temperature rise of just a degree or two simply because these species are familiar to live in environment within a very small temperature range, and any temperature increase above this range is likely to cause their extinction as they will have not enough time to adapt.

Adaptation to new climate conditions will mean the difference between survival and extinction for many animal species. The ones that will be able to adapt will have chance for survival while others will end up in history books under "animals that used to live on our planet". Though this situation looks like the nature's "survival of the strongest" there's still very big difference between nature selection and "global warming selection". While nature knows exactly how much time certain species need to adapt to new conditions, man-made global warming is coming to soon, not giving enough time to species to adapt, therefore heavily decreasing their chances for survival.

Global warming currently isn't No.1 problem mostly responsible for so many endangered animals around the globe. No.1 problem still remains habitat loss but if global warming strengthens its impact in years to come, many more animals will be listed as endangered, and many will forever perish from the face of the Earth. Biodiversity loss is already huge ecological problem, and if world fails to stop global warming impact this problem will soon reach catastrophic proportions.

This planet does not only belong to us, as we are not the only living creatures on earth. Animals also have the right to live, and we must not only care for our survival but for their survival as well, because we must not forget that all species are connected in so called "circle of life". Global warming is one of the biggest problems in human history and the destiny of our planet is in our hands. Circle of life does not include only us but plants and animals too, and without the circle of life there's no life at all.