Global Warming Shrinking Sheep

Add it to the list of weird things blamed on climate change: smaller sheep. Scientists say Scotland's warmer winters explain why a wild herd on an uninhabited northern island are a full 5% smaller than they were in the '80s, the BBC reports. The theory says that only big sheep survived years ago because they had enough fat to survive the winter. Now that grass is available nearly all the time, even the little guys are passing their genes along.

Wild sheep generally get bigger through the generations, but the milder temperatures create a "paradoxical decrease in size," report the researchers in Science. "The next step is to extend our description of past change into a predictive model," the lead researcher said. "But it's too early to say if, in 100 years, we will have chihuahuas herding pocket-sized sheep." (More climate change stories.)