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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

#231

Post by manquer »

q1w2 wrote: post #208
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.

This is a fantastic question - as this is indeed done for other African animals, like crocodiles. The biggest issue is that elephants cannot be profitably raised in captivity - they require too much food, too much space, and take too long to produce tusks. ...and if you allow them to roam in reserves, then poachers shoot them. I do wonder if it might work in another part of the world that could offer better security…

You cannot grow them as a business model, however if you already have a preserve and elephants on them wouldn't a) be safer to remove the tusks from the elephants to make them less of a target and b) sell the removed tusks to fund your preserve ?

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

#232

Post by Stevvo »

jbay808 wrote: post #192
drtz wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It started off about as common as humans having green eyes. Elephant poaching has been around since long before the Mozambique civil war. The number of tuskless elephants may have been at 2-4% prior to the war, but that doesn't mean that lower levels of poaching didn't push it up to that level from some much lower naturally-occurring level. 2-4% seems like a _very high_ rate for a trait that could negatively impact…

Further to your point, I read elsewhere that the base rate in captivity is closer to 0.5%.

Human behavior probably has the opposite effect in captive elephants. If a captive elephant is born without tusks then the Mahout is going to kill it rather than invest in rearing an animal that has much reduced utility and will not yield healthy offspring.

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

#233

Post by bambax »

Elephants are not "evolving" and it's not a "response" to poaching! Poachers killed elephants with tusks, and as a consequence elephants without tusks have a reproductive advantage.

This is more like dog breeding than about nature fighting back.

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

#234

Post by TedDoesntTalk »

AussieWog93 wrote: post #213
esturk wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>our ancestors comprise mostly of females in a ratio roughly 3:2 to males. For anyone else wondering how this is possible on an individual level, apparently a lot of people used to reproduce with their first and second cousins.

I do not understand how mating with a 1st or 2nd cousin affects the ratio of females to males. Could you explain?

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

#235

Post by dissent »

bambax wrote: post #233

Elephants are not "evolving" and it's not a "response" to poaching! Poachers killed elephants with tusks, and as a consequence elephants without tusks have a reproductive advantage. This is more like dog breeding than about nature fighting back.

Disagreed. This really is natural selection and not artificial selection.

The poachers aren't selectively breeding for elephants without tusks. Quite the opposite. You are correct that it's a tautology - the elephants remaining are the ones without tusks - but that's exactly how natural selection works.

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

#236

Post by Ansil849 »

seattle_spring wrote: post #216
Ansil849 wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you don't see the absurdity of this? At all? You're literally saying killing people is more acceptable than killing elephants.

I'm, uh, not literally saying that at all. No one kills humans for sustenance, and cattle do not have the same value as humans. The absurdity is in your PETA-fueled absolutism of giving all living beings an equal level of value. I'm going to eat a huge, expensive steak tonight just to cancel out the energy you've put into this conversation.

You stated, plain as day:

> 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?

Humans are non-endangered animals, are they not? Therefore you are _literally_ saying killing humans for sustenance is more acceptable than killing an endangered animal for a necklace.

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

#237

Post by p1necone »

bambax wrote: post #233

Elephants are not "evolving" and it's not a "response" to poaching! Poachers killed elephants with tusks, and as a consequence elephants without tusks have a reproductive advantage. This is more like dog breeding than about nature fighting back.

> Poachers killed elephants with tusks, and as a consequence elephants without tusks have a reproductive advantage.

Yes, this is natural selection, the process through which evolution happens.

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

#238

Post by anigbrowl »

bambax wrote: post #233

Elephants are not "evolving" and it's not a "response" to poaching! Poachers killed elephants with tusks, and as a consequence elephants without tusks have a reproductive advantage. This is more like dog breeding than about nature fighting back.

A distinction without a difference.

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

#239

Post by knuthsat »

If humans can modify the animals in the environment this fast, I see no reason why we just cannot assume that most of the living wild animals are already a result of humans doing the selection.

I was always quite confused by the fact that most animals look quite nice but given these results I guess humans can extinguish the ugly and leave the beautiful.

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

#240

Post by sillysaurusx »

Ansil849 wrote: post #236
seattle_spring wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm, uh, not literally saying that at all. No one kills humans for sustenance, and cattle do not have the same value as humans. The absurdity is in your PETA-fueled absolutism of giving all living beings an equal level of value. I'm going to eat a huge, expensive steak tonight just to cancel out the energy you've put into this conversation.

You stated, plain as day: > 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? Humans are non-endangered animals, are they not? Therefore you are _literally_ saying killing humans for sustenance is more acceptable than killing an endangered animal for a necklace.

Listen. You're right. There, I gave you validation.

But you're not going to change anyone's mind. So what's the point?

Remember, the primary purpose of HN is entertainment (intellectual gratification). Internalizing this helped me break the habit of making such arguments "just to be right."

I'll throw it back at you: Yes, I just ate two pork steaks. I have two more in the fridge. In fact, I'd personally murder a family of pigs if it was the only way I'd ever be able to eat pork steaks again. They're that delicious, and I am that selfish.

Life isn't nice. It's brutal, short, and sprinkled with periods of happiness and ecstasy. It's always been that way, and it'll be that way long after we're gone.

It is literally fine to use humans for sustenance if everyone collectively agrees it's fine, by the way. People have done it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uruguayan_Air_Force_Flight_571

You could argue "Well, that was survival. Besides, those people were already dead."

Literally every animal born into factory farming is already dead. They just don't realize it yet.

I think linking to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxvQPzrg2Wg&ab_channel=Kurzg... is probably your best bet at even getting people to stop and think about the question at all. Yet if even Kurzgesagt's eloquence doesn't make a dent (I still scarf down pork steaks on a regular basis), what hope do you have here?

Once you internalize all of this, perhaps you'll be in a frame of mind to realize that it was off-topic to bring up factory farming in a thread about ivory poaching. I get where you're coming from, and I agree that it seems closely related. But things like this just aren't worth litigating; broadcasting your own morals to a wide audience is rarely a good idea.

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