Birds beak shape changed in what might be a case of rapid evolution; plus hurricanes in January and cold dips across the East

0:00From AccuWeather.com, this is AccuWeather Daily, a brief host read article, its weather news and a nutshell. This episode is brought to you by Factor. Get out of your meal run with Factor and kickstart your healthy eating journey. Factor makes it easy with 100 rotating weekly meals designed by dietitians and crafted by chefs. These meals are delicious and super easy to grab and eat because they're ready in about two minutes. There's tons of meal options too. From high protein to calorie smart, Mediterranean diet options, GLP1 support, ready to eat salads, and more. For me, I'm just looking for a little variety throughout the week. So I recently tried Factor's queso, fundido, and ground beef. In two minutes, it was ready and what I wasn't expecting was the flavor explosion I got. The queso was rich and creamy. The nicely seasoned ground beef a perfect complement. But don't just take it from me, try Factor for yourself. Go to FactorMeals.com slash AccuWeather50All and use code AccuWeather50All to get 50% off and

1:03free breakfast for a year. Eat like a pro this month with Factor. New subscribers only, very spy plan. One free breakfast item per box for one year while subscription is active. Dark-eyed, junko songbirds are known for being a hardy winter bird showing up after a fresh snow to farage for food. After times of the year, they'll peck through leaf litter to find tiny morsels. Well, junkos are not usually found in cities, but that does seem to be changing, as the climate crisis affected their mountain forest habitats. Well, they've started taking up residents in more urban settings, such as Los Angeles. Now, that gave researchers at UCLA an opportunity to study the birds, and they started to notice something very interesting. The city-dwelling birds have shorter and stubbier beaks, a stark contrast, from the long beaks their mountain counterparts used to eat seeds and insects. But as the researchers looked over data on the birds that have resided on the UCLA campus

2:08in recent years, they noticed something odd. Junkos that hatched in 2021 and 2022 after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic had longer beaks, similar to those seen on the mountain birds. But as pandemic restrictions eased on campus and students returned to classes, the city-bird traits returned and the beaks of the birds hatched in 2023 and 2024 were shortened once again. What are the researchers pointed out that evolution is often thought to be a slow process, but when they did a year-by-year comparison, they were amazed at how stark and how quick the change was. Now they postulate that compared with the longer beaked mountain dwelling birds, the shorter beaks on campus birds, might be better suited for a wider range diet of human food scraps. But in 2020, when classes first went online and dining halls closed, the beaks of newborn birds evolved back to their longer state, fitted for their natural diets.

3:11Now the study highlights the effects that humans can have on wildlife and shows how fast evolution can occur for animals needing to adapt to their surroundings. One of the co-authors of the research paper said that humans and nature are really quite interconnected, and we are very much a part of the ecosystem. The researchers did pump the brakes a little bit on their own findings, suggesting that evolution is the primary hypothesis, but there are other explanations that need to be ruled out, such as gene flow, when individuals from elsewhere, such as the mountain birds enter the population. However, the authors said they don't think that scenario is likely, since the birds did not show any behavioral changes. The authors are working on obtaining genetic information from the bird's blood, so they can pinpoint whether the beaked changes are a result of genetic changes. But for now, the study and preliminary findings of junkos evolving in an urban setting and

4:12the ability to live with humans might bring a more hopeful message. One of the researchers said we're causing a lot of harm on a global level. The junkos are declining as a whole, but they're doing quite well in cities, and seeing how populations manage to keep up, despite what we view as these bad odds, I think brings a lot of hope that if they can do it and it can surprise us, maybe other organisms can too. We're more than a month removed from hurricane season, and while there are no hurricanes on the horizon, it's not unheard of that a hurricane could swirl up in January. In fact, it happened just 10 years ago. In January 2016, Hurricane Alex became the first Atlantic hurricane to form in January since 1938, and the first Atlantic hurricane to occur in January since 1955, when Hurricane Alice developed. Now, it is an unusual event. In addition to those hurricanes, only four tropical or subtropical storms have been named

5:15in the Atlantic during January since 1900. Before becoming a hurricane, Alex made the transition from a non-tropical storm to a subtropical storm to a fully developed tropical storm during the middle part of January 2016. Well, the polar vortex stepping into the U.S. is bringing much colder temperatures this week with freezing temps as far south as Florida expected. The weather pattern setting up this week across the northern and eastern U.S. is likely to continue for the rest of the month. A southward dip in the jet stream will allow persistent waves of cold and snow to push into the Great Lakes and the northeast. Snow could accumulate as far south as the Appalachians of North Carolina and Tennessee. While the snowy weather is unlikely to reach the Gulf Coast states, the weather pattern will bring a more persistent chill into at least early next week. That's all for now. You can find more regional forecasts and science-based articles at AccuWeather.com and for your local

6:17forecast at your fingertips, download the AccuWeather app. Enjoy the rest of your day. Be safe. I'll be back tomorrow with more from AccuWeather.