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Female African elephants are evolving without tusks due to ivory poaching

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Re: Female African elephants are evolving without tusks due to ivory poaching

#21

Post by jalgos_eminator »

lmilcin wrote: post #3
gpt5 wrote: post #2

While sad as a whole, the responsiveness of evolution is beautiful in this case. It also demonstrates that human efforts to stop poaching have not been successful (otherwise this evolution wouldn’t happen), but luckily, nature responds.

Put this in context of a lot of other species who were not able to evolve a mechanism like that. The way I understand this there was likely a very small population of elephants already without tusks, maybe some kind of genetic defect that happened to be an advantage once you add greedy people into the mix. Or what else is possible is that there was one off mutation that produced small family of elephants that poacher…

> This does not necessarily mean any new genetic material or "nature responding".

But this is exactly how evolution works. There are always mutations in every generation, and sometimes those mutations are beneficial. These genes are being selected by the organism's environment, and if the environment changes, then the genes that are selected will be different. That is "nature responding". Elephants without tusks (or very small ones) are more likely to survive and produce offspring.

Re: Female African elephants are evolving without tusks due to ivory poaching

#22

Post by KiranRao0 »

lmilcin wrote: post #3
gpt5 wrote: post #2

While sad as a whole, the responsiveness of evolution is beautiful in this case. It also demonstrates that human efforts to stop poaching have not been successful (otherwise this evolution wouldn’t happen), but luckily, nature responds.

Put this in context of a lot of other species who were not able to evolve a mechanism like that. The way I understand this there was likely a very small population of elephants already without tusks, maybe some kind of genetic defect that happened to be an advantage once you add greedy people into the mix. Or what else is possible is that there was one off mutation that produced small family of elephants that poacher…

I would argue what you describe is Evolution as broken into the two pieces: Genetic Drift and Natural Selection.

Genetic Drift is always occurring randomly. Some elephants had a "genetic defect" to live without tusks before poaching. Some humans had the 0.1% resistance to the hypothetical super-covid before the disease.

As new environmental conditions emerge (human poaching, hypothetical super-covid, etc), some genes are far better adapted to the new environment (tuskless, covid resistance, etc). Those genes then thrive in the new environment and consume the available resources left by those killed off.

Re: Female African elephants are evolving without tusks due to ivory poaching

#23

Post by croes »

asdff wrote: post #19
gpt5 wrote: post #2

While sad as a whole, the responsiveness of evolution is beautiful in this case. It also demonstrates that human efforts to stop poaching have not been successful (otherwise this evolution wouldn’t happen), but luckily, nature responds.

Its important to realize what this "response" actually is. Nature isn't actively doing anything. You have 100 elephants, maybe 5 are typically born without tusks. Suddenly you kill the other 95 for their tusks, leaving behind those 5 to survive and reproduce and next generation, 33 of your 100 elephants are without tusks or something like that. Over time, humans are acting as a predator in the environment, driving a…

Nature is never doing anything.

Re: Female African elephants are evolving without tusks due to ivory poaching

#24

Post by tw04 »

tombert wrote: post #8

Honest question from someone who knows virtually nothing about chemistry or material science: is there a difference in quality between synthetic and natural ivory? If not, why is poaching even still a viable market?

This will probably be downvoted but the reality is it's because there's a ton of new money in China where they're still valuing things like Ivory culturally. There's no cultural stigma at this point. The government has banned it but the black market trade is still strong. See shark fin soup as another example.

Re: Female African elephants are evolving without tusks due to ivory poaching

#25

Post by asdff »

officialjunk wrote: post #14
gpt5 wrote: post #2

While sad as a whole, the responsiveness of evolution is beautiful in this case. It also demonstrates that human efforts to stop poaching have not been successful (otherwise this evolution wouldn’t happen), but luckily, nature responds.

but the tusks had a purpose to defend and now they are defenseless.

Stomping is a common way for elephants to deal with predators. Tusks are used a lot as a tool though.

Re: Female African elephants are evolving without tusks due to ivory poaching

#26

Post by croes »

officialjunk wrote: post #14
gpt5 wrote: post #2

While sad as a whole, the responsiveness of evolution is beautiful in this case. It also demonstrates that human efforts to stop poaching have not been successful (otherwise this evolution wouldn’t happen), but luckily, nature responds.

but the tusks had a purpose to defend and now they are defenseless.

If the probability to get killed for the tusks is higher than get killed by predators then it's an advantage.

Re: Female African elephants are evolving without tusks due to ivory poaching

#27

Post by [deleted] »

mpfundstein wrote: post #11
bogwog wrote: post #6

> Researchers found the number of tuskless female elephants in Mozambique increased by almost double over 30 years. This overlaps with a period of civil conflict, where armed forces slaughtered 90% of the elephant population to produce ivory. This ivory went on to finance the conflict. People suck.

nice generalisation. i for once never thought even remotely about slaughtering a freaking elephant in order to get the tusks. yes lots of people are bad and do bad things , but that does not mean that all people suck.

[deleted]

Re: Female African elephants are evolving without tusks due to ivory poaching

#28

Post by drclau »

nyc111 wrote: post #5

In the Science article they wrote, “Poaching resulted in strong selection that favored tusklessness amid a rapid population decline.” And, “Whole-genome scans implicated two candidate genes with known roles in mammalian tooth development (AMELX and MEP1a), including the formation of enamel, dentin, cementum, and the periodontium.” So, there was a change in the genes, but how do they connect this fact with poaching? I…

It's artificial* selection. The ones with husks die** more often before having offsprings, or will on average get to have fewer offsprings, in comparison to the tuskless individuals.

*) Humans are putting the pressure.

**) Are killed by poachers.

Re: Female African elephants are evolving without tusks due to ivory poaching

#29

Post by geoffmanning »

_jal wrote: post #7
geoffmanning wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure 'beautiful' or 'lucky' are words i'd use to describe it. Did you catch that the males of tuskless mothers generally don't survive, decimating the male population? It's a tragic and desperate response, though quite incredible that such a dramatic evolutionary trait can occur. It makes me wonder what we could become, if only...

> if only... If only humans were harvested for bony growths?

LOL. Yes.

Re: Female African elephants are evolving without tusks due to ivory poaching

#30

Post by asdff »

nyc111 wrote: post #5

In the Science article they wrote, “Poaching resulted in strong selection that favored tusklessness amid a rapid population decline.” And, “Whole-genome scans implicated two candidate genes with known roles in mammalian tooth development (AMELX and MEP1a), including the formation of enamel, dentin, cementum, and the periodontium.” So, there was a change in the genes, but how do they connect this fact with poaching? I…

It's not like evolution detects this. If you kill off all the blond headed people in town, all the babies next year will be born with brown hair. The tuskless variant was already in the population at some proportion, but due to tusks being a target of poaching, those that carry the tuskless variant are more likely to survive and have offspring, who are also going to have this tuskless variant. Over time, the population will shift and this tuskless variant will be present at a higher proportion in the overall population.
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