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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

#161

Post by bilekas »

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…

See my below comment - but no 'incongruity' is something completely different to irony.

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

#162

Post by AtNightWeCode »

Jyaif wrote: post #74
AtNightWeCode wrote: post #63

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.

If there was a deadly virus that killed human that do not have blue eyes, the entire human population would "evolve" to having blue eyes very quickly. This is exactly what happened with the tusk-less elephants.

Some eye colors are dominant. We still have a lot of different eye colors.

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

#163

Post by ceejayoz »

kadoban wrote: post #113
ceejayoz wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are short-term and long-term advantages and disadvantages, though. From the article, it sounds like this may have protected them from human predation, but there may be significant long-term negative impacts on the species due to the lack of viable male offspring. Survive more easily for a couple generations, but go extinct as an all-female species after a couple more...

What do the males die of exactly? Not clear to me.

Seems like the mutation kills male embryos.

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abe7389

> Survey data revealed tusk-inheritance patterns consistent with an X chromosome–linked dominant, male-lethal trait. 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. One of these loci (AMELX) is associated with an X-linked dominant, male-lethal syndrome in humans that diminishes the growth of maxillary lateral incisors (homologous to elephant tusks).

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

#164

Post by seattle_spring »

Ansil849 wrote: post #98
seattle_spring wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are cows an endangered species?

What is your point? That it's acceptable to kill or otherwise maim creatures which are not endangered, like, say, humans?

Yes, killing a non-endangered animal for sustenance is more acceptable than killing an endangered animal for a necklace pendant (or any other reason). Any other questions?

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

#165

Post by engineer_22 »

TehCorwiz wrote: post #151
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.

But we don't commonly run around saying Arabians and Morgans are different because of evolution. Neither do we say that chihuahua's and labradors have evolved into their present form.

In my humble opinion "evolution" refers to speciation, which takes very many generations.

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

#166

Post by klodolph »

rsj_hn wrote: post #157
klodolph wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, it turns out that the English language is full of incoherent distinctions. Words mean radically different things in different contexts, have definitions that are not really self-consistent, and tons of exceptions that we have to memorize. And yet, we must make sense of it to navigate.

If I were a philosopher, or if I wrote dictionary entries, I might decide to spend the time to come up with a rather clever definition for "artificial". Feel free to come up with a definition yourself, if that's your fancy.

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

#167

Post by notriddle »

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.

Injection-molded plastic?

I kid. I kid. Obviously, injection-molded plastic is bad for the environment, regardless of its history as an "ethical source of ivory."

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

#168

Post by thaumasiotes »

esturk wrote: post #141
bialpio wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except it's only advantageous to female elephants, according to the article: "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 lim…

Maybe not as much as you would think. Naturally, not all males mate and the mating ratio is not always 1:1. Take humans for example, it's been shown our ancestors comprise mostly of females in a ratio roughly 3:2 to males. That is, some male ancestor probably mated with more than one female ancestor somewhere.

> it's been shown our ancestors comprise mostly of females in a ratio roughly 3:2 to males.

I thought it was 2:1.

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

#169

Post by mfer »

csours wrote: post #40
jsnell wrote: post #12

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.

Is this actually evolution?

I ask because it’s not a change in the genetic structure of elephants. It’s an existing trait becoming more wide spread.

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

#170

Post by thaumasiotes »

qorrect wrote: post #118
klodolph wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

... Evolution has three main components

Sure, and two of them are identical from every practical and theoretical perspective.
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