Female African elephants are evolving without tusks due to ivory poaching • Hacker News Board

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

#151

Post by TehCorwiz » Wed, Oct 27, 2021, 8:48 PM UTC

mulmen wrote: post #148

Is this actually evolution or just selective breeding? By killing elephants with tusks the poachers are favoring elephants with the no-tusk gene. This isn't a lot different than killing a dog that bites sheep, which is how we bred herding dogs. Or a wolf that eats your baby, which is how we domesticated dogs. This trait already existed so it certainly wasn't "engineered due to mass poaching for ivory" as claimed.

Evolution IS selective breeding. The members of a species most fit for their environment are successful in procreation. The female elephants without tusks are surviving at higher rates which is resulting in more offspring with no tusks. This causes a shift in the population where a trait previously with no or little benefit becomes advantageous and the shift in genetic makeup of the whole population evolves.

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

#152

Post by klodolph » Wed, Oct 27, 2021, 8:49 PM UTC

NovemberWhiskey wrote: post #124

klodolph wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is selective breeding / artificial selection, not natural selection.

No, it's not. People are not choosing pairs of elephants to breed.

It may be unintentional, but it is still artificial.

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

#153

Post by bilekas » Wed, Oct 27, 2021, 8:50 PM UTC

nickff wrote: post #111

lowkey_ wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the parent, but the irony is that to bring good fortune, you bring incredible misfortune (extinction, even) upon other living things.

It seems like the comment I responded to was referring to something like an 'incongruity', and saying it was '[situational] irony', but it doesn't really satisfy the definition of situational irony (from wikipedia): > "Situational irony: The disparity of intention and result; when the result of an action is contrary to the desired or expected effect." In this specific case, the intention of extracting animal products…

Okay, lets give context of irony, Elephants are hunted for their amazing mystical power to bring good fortune to humans who posses their tusks.

Now lets imagine the elephants actually provide a long distant benefit to humans, butterfly effect style. Maybe their migration involves knocking over some dormant trees with their tusks, which they're known to do, that would then knock over seeds for new trees. This would aid in the containment of soil and prevent soil erosion.

Instead, consider they're all gone, the trees all die off without seeding, then windstorms etc turn more land into desert.

Ironically those same hunters now have less land to grow food from. Thus less fortune, the action to bring more fortune has resulted in less.

This is a stretch of an example using just 1 animal, but whats more confusing is why it needed to be defined through the purview of defining ironic.

Edit: As mentioned this is 1 example, but there are an uncountable scenarios of 'medicinal' practices that require the 'rarest' animal components to 'work' from. Point is, its all superstition and it contributes far too much.

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

#154

Post by what_is_orcas » Wed, Oct 27, 2021, 8:51 PM UTC

phkahler wrote: post #134

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.

It's also interesting that a single mutation can cause this lack of tusks. That reinforces another concept for me - the ability to adapt is also important and has been selected for. Meaning simple genes to define structure are preferable to complex sets of them. On a related note, if "ability to evolve" is a characteristic that can be selected for that would explain why all complex life uses sexual reproduction. Mixi…

> It's also interesting that a single mutation can cause this lack of tusks. That reinforces another concept for me - the ability to adapt is also important and has been selected for. Meaning simple genes to define structure are preferable to complex sets of them.

I wouldn't get too attached to that idea... in a lot of cases, having one gene responsible for producing a phenotype can be a very bad thing, like oncogenes (responsible for the growth of cancers) and a bunch that determine development and/or aging.

> On a related note, if "ability to evolve" is a characteristic that can be selected for that would explain why all complex life uses sexual reproduction. Mixing genes offers such advantages that most everything that can't do it is still basically bacteria.

Again, sometimes. There are lizards and bugs that clone themselves (parthanogenesis) which can be really handy for when the population isn't doing so hot.

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

#155

Post by klodolph » Wed, Oct 27, 2021, 8:52 PM UTC

rsj_hn wrote: post #140

Hamuko wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A man with a gun doesn't sound like "natural selection".

Why not? I often see people draw this distinction between humanity and nature, as if we weren't part of nature, and there is something deeply misanthropic about it. Of course we are part of nature. We may be screwing over the habitat of other animals -- like rabbits in Australia or pythons in the everglades -- but we are certainly part of nature and this is a textbook case of natural selection at work.

That is exactly what the distinction "natural / artificial" means... it's not some kind of judgment. In this sense of the word, artificial just means "by humans".

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

#156

Post by PradeetPatel » Wed, Oct 27, 2021, 8:53 PM UTC

At the risk of being downvoted to oblivion, is there such thing as ethicially sourced ivory?

If not, I imagine the only reasonable thing to do would be to educate and raise awareness on the catastrophic impact poaching has on the elephant species as a whole.

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

#157

Post by rsj_hn » Wed, Oct 27, 2021, 8:54 PM UTC

klodolph wrote: post #155

rsj_hn wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not? I often see people draw this distinction between humanity and nature, as if we weren't part of nature, and there is something deeply misanthropic about it. Of course we are part of nature. We may be screwing over the habitat of other animals -- like rabbits in Australia or pythons in the everglades -- but we are certainly part of nature and this is a textbook case of natural selection at work.

That is exactly what the distinction "natural / artificial" means... it's not some kind of judgment. In this sense of the word, artificial just means "by humans".

That is also an incoherent distinction. If humans ferment milk to make cheese, then this is "artificial" food? No, I think people use "natural" and "artificial" to mean "traditional practice" versus "modern practice", but humans do all of it.

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

#158

Post by sva_ » Wed, Oct 27, 2021, 8:55 PM UTC

PradeetPatel wrote: post #156

At the risk of being downvoted to oblivion, is there such thing as ethicially sourced ivory? If not, I imagine the only reasonable thing to do would be to educate and raise awareness on the catastrophic impact poaching has on the elephant species as a whole.

Great plan, but I'm pretty sure that people who buy ivory don't give a damn about elephants.

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

#159

Post by what_is_orcas » Wed, Oct 27, 2021, 8:55 PM UTC

gowld wrote: post #71

csours wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Evolution has two main components. The random variation was already there. The natural selection is doing its part now.

I thought evolution's components were sexual selection (who fucks) and natural selection (who dies). Random variation can change genes, yeah, but evolution is driven through the dis/advantages of the resulting phenotype (do they succeed at finding a mate, do they raise as man offspring to sexual maturity and do they survive long enough to do the aforementioned).

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

#160

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Oct 27, 2021, 8:55 PM UTC

nickff wrote: post #52

bilekas wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> "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." How is this ironic? Most cultures have prized animal products throughout recorded history, and many have practiced sacrifices, which is literally the killing of the being.

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