Summer is only halfway over and wildfires in Canada have already burned roughly 12 million hectares of forest (about 30 million acres). ….But for many plants and animals, from birds to beetles, fire is not such a potent, existential threat. Creatures in Canada and beyond have evolved along with wildfire over many millennia, acquiring clever adaptations to survive. Some species are actually worse off without it.  “Fire is a natural process,” Gavin Jones, a fire ecologist at the US Forest Service, told Vox. “It’s an important and critical piece of the health of our planet.”  In a new review paper, Jones and a handful of other researchers revealed just how much fire has shaped ecosystems and the biology of animals. Some woodpeckers, for example, have evolved to pick grubs only out of freshly burned trees. A tiny mouse-like marsupial, meanwhile, has adapted to shelter in place in a sleeplike state called torpor as flames pass overhead.