The Kittens Are Next ...

Global warming is bad news for baby walruses

It seems global warming is now separating babies from their mothers. Heartless bastard. The cute and bristly walrus makes its home on Arctic ice shelves, which are melting rapidly as unusually warm water flows in from the Bering Sea. As their happy walrus home melts and collapses, baby walruses can be separated from their mothers and swim out into deep waters, where they -- sniff -- drown. In the space of two months in 2004, a Coast Guard ship came across nine walrus calves swimming alone, a highly unusual sight. "[T]he calves would be swimming around us crying. We couldn't rescue them," says a member of the research team. Hear that? That's our heart breaking. Sea-ice melt also causes trouble for adult walruses, who find food by diving off of ice shelves into shallow waters. The conclusion of researchers: if the walruses (walri?) can't adapt to melting sea ice, we may see fewer of them in the future. And that could mean no more goo goo g'joob.