Tuesday, August 12, 2003

And lastly from ENN, MADRID — Bears at Madrid's zoo were licking big blocks of ice with fruit inside to keep cool as Europe sweltered in abnormally high temperatures for yet another day.

Other animals are not so lucky. Eels in the Rhine and chickens in Bosnia and Brittany have succumbed by the thousand. German cuckoos are migrating earlier, and butterflies are breeding three times instead of once.

"Birds are particularly affected because they are small and have a greater surface area to weight and a higher body temperature than humans," said Juan Carlos Atienza, a biologist at the Spanish Ornithological Society. Read on in: Birds and sealife at risk from European heatwave

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