Twitter Tuesday (5/14)

This week for Twitter Tuesday, we had multiple parts. The first part being, finding issues facing our chosen animal. When I asked ChatGPT what are some issues facing penguins, I noticed that most of the problems all led back to one thing, climate change. Rising sea levels, loss of habitat, increased predation, declining population, rising temperatures all can lead back to climate change. This made me realize that yes, climate change is one of the biggest issues humans face today as it can destroy the world if we don't make a difference, however, this issue is also as big of a threat to animals as well. And this has been clear from the declining animal populations, even leading so far as to extinction. This made me realize this is the issue I want to focus on for my research and it's link to penguins. When I decided this was the issue I wanted to examine, I searched on Google Scholar, penguins and climate change. The results from this search were many and many articles spanning as early from 2001 to 2024. It's interesting that even 23 years ago, when researchers were first examining the climate crisis and it's affect on penguins, they said this was an issue we needed to focus on as we don't know the extent of the long term affects they don't know what will happen in the future. Well, 23 years later, I can definitively tell them, it is still an issue. After choosing two articles, their main takeaway and goal of their research was the same. That understanding what affects these animals the most and which species are most in danger, this data can help guide conservation efforts to protect the animals and focus on the issues that are the most important first. For part 3 of this week's Twitter Tuesday we were also tasked with finding two organizations that advocate for our animals. It was easy to find organizations that advocate for penguins, especially finding one's that link back to conservation efforts in light of the worsening climate crisis. One of the organizations, I was already following on Twitter, Penguins International, and I recommend following them as they have research for every single species that you can find on their website here! The second organization I found was The Global Penguin Society. Their approach is different as in to help drive conservation efforts, they are conducting their own project in which they are tracking the specific species of penguins. From the data they have found, it can help us understand what penguins are facing and help drive conservation efforts as well. Their website is linked here and I recommend everyone to take a look at their website!