Climate Change and Living Things: Move, Change, or Die Out

0:00How does a changing climate affect plants and animals?

0:04Every plant and animal needs the right conditions to live: the right temperature, water and food.

0:11Look at this mountain. Lower down it is warm. Higher up it is cold.

0:17Each living thing lives in the zone that suits it: flowers in the warm meadow, trees in the cool forest, and a pika on the cold rocks near the top.

0:28Today the climate is warming quickly, mostly because people burn coal, oil and gas.

0:35As it warms, every zone on the mountain shifts uphill.

0:39Some living things move with their zone. Here that means uphill. Elsewhere it means toward the poles.

0:47Some change what they do. In a warmer spring, flowers open earlier and birds nest earlier.

0:54If the warming goes on, the cold zone shrinks until it is almost gone.

1:00The pika is already near the top. It has nowhere left to go.

1:05Its numbers fall. A species that cannot move or change fast enough can die out.

1:11When the climate changes, living things move, change, or die out.