thephotosocietyさんのインスタグラム写真 - (thephotosocietyInstagram)「Photograph by @andyparkinsonphoto/@thephotosociety Mountain hare making like a pancake – I shall forever cherish the four days that my uncle and I spent with this wonderful creature high in the Scotland’s Monadhliath mountains. On day one we were amazed at how trusting and confiding she was and for the next three days we returned to always find her in exactly the same spot. She came to know our voices and it seemed, to trust us implicitly. In no time at all I was able to wander slowly around her, pondering the compositional possibilities and all from just a few feet away. In our rapidly warming world images like this can now convey a more worrying trend, a trend that some 8 or so years ago I was only just starting to notice. Now it seems the trend is here to stay and Scotland’s mountains are remaining snow-free for more and more of the winter. For mammals such as these, with such unique adaptations the outlook is worrying and perhaps a little bleak. Their camouflage has evolved for a reason for those hares with the whitest coats more likely to survive, thereby passing on their genes to their offspring, such is the wonderful adaptive nature of natural selection. But now this evolutionary gift is becoming a curse, leaving these hares more vulnerable to predation from both their avian and terrestrial predators, birds like golden eagles or mammals like fox and stoat. Now of course we shall start to witness a different variation of natural selection, where those hares that perhaps have a darker coat, more grey or brown, will be the hares more likely to survive. It will be they that pass on their genes, their advantage to their progeny, the only question of course is whether they have the luxury of time and whether or not they will indeed be able to adapt to survive.」9月28日 0時13分