121–130 of 320 posts
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What is your point? That it's acceptable to kill or otherwise maim creatures which are not endangered, like, say, humans?
There's a potential ethical difference between wiping out, say, a bee hive and wiping out bees as a species, yes.
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Evolution is an umbrella term, but in the most general form, evolution means a change in genetics in a population over time. So yes, the genetic 'option' was there before, but it is advantageous now.
Not only is it more advantageous, it actually was force selected for (IIRC, poached elephants are often left for dead). So this is closer to selective breeding/artificial selection more so than natural selection.
When I think of selective breeding I think of humans picking out which animals (cows/dogs/wheat/etc) get to reproduce.
Evolution is in general very slow when it comes to animals. I have my doubts if poaching is the true cause or if there is some environmental reason.
Evolution is slow when humans aren't a involved. Most poachers kill the elephants for the tusks. This is artificial selection, similar to dog breeding, which is different from natural selection.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/04/130409095414.h...
https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/rapid-evolutio...
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Evolution has two main components. The random variation was already there. The natural selection is doing its part now.
This is selective breeding / artificial selection, not natural selection.
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Superstition. Elephants and tigers are not hunted for inherent qualities of their bodies, but for the belief that consumption of their parts in various ways helps health/virility/...
Superstition really seems to be one of the largest factor when it comes to animal hunting/consumption. It's ridiculous and a little bit ironic that something supposedly to bring good fortune will result in wide scale killing of animals, living earthlings.
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Right, but "natural selection" generally doesn't include human influence, but that's semantics. Would you also say that fruits that are selectively bred to be bigger and juicier are also under the influence of "natural selection"?
I wouldn't, because a fruit bred to be bigger and juicier is engineered by humans for their own benefit, while an elephant evolving to not have tusks is evolution going against human benefit. I believe natural selection includes the influence of any species related to the species in question as predator or prey, and humans in this case are predators. We may historically be responsible for far more processes of natura…
If it weren’t for us hunting these elephants for their tusks, there isn’t a reason they’d evolve in this manner. So I just wouldn’t call that evolution by natural selection. Same thing if we set off to exterminate all mosquitoes.
But I do get your point. I’m conflicted if we can count ourselves as any other predator species when discussing evolution.
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Evolution is an umbrella term, but in the most general form, evolution means a change in genetics in a population over time. So yes, the genetic 'option' was there before, but it is advantageous now.
And this is why genetic diversity is a good thing.
In case anyone is wondering about the size of the effect, https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/wildlife-... has the numbers. Before the war, 2-4% of female elephants were tuskless. Now 32% of newly born ones are. So it's a significant change, but it's not like this property was coming out of nowhere. It started off about as common as humans having green eyes.
Evolution is an umbrella term, but in the most general form, evolution means a change in genetics in a population over time. So yes, the genetic 'option' was there before, but it is advantageous now.
"They identified two likely genes AMELX and MEP1a, which are passed from mothers to the offspring on the X chromosome. But if a disrupted gene is passed in a male elephant, the elephant dies; the female elephant would instead evolve to be born without tusks. "
What would be the effect of this on male elephant population when taken to the limit (i.e. 100% of females are tuskless)? Seems to me that it'd skew the proportion of births towards 2:1 (assuming it's now at 1:1)? How significant impact would that have to the species as a whole?
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There are plenty of horses and horse-ancestors in the fossil record. We would at least expect to see some horn material preserved. Failing that, there would be evidence on the skull itself due to how the attachment of the horn would leave evidence of its existence on the bone of the skull. You would probably also expect to see some horns in archaeological caches. I know they sometimes find narwhal tusks in burial sit…
There's also no cultural record of legends of "unicorn hunts" unlike say hunting the white stag.
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Evolution has two main components. The random variation was already there. The natural selection is doing its part now.
This is selective breeding / artificial selection, not natural selection.