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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

#261

Post by sellyme »

IggleSniggle wrote: post #228
jbattle wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the difference in this case? Doesn't seem too different from how camouflaged eggs would have developed (maybe just faster because the selection mechanism is so strong). When I think of selective breeding I think of humans picking out which animals (cows/dogs/wheat/etc) get to reproduce.

Right, selective breeding is just a subset of natural selection. Not sure why folks seem to want to exclude humans from nature, like we’re not part of the exact same system.

> Not sure why folks seem to want to exclude humans from nature

Probably because the concept of "nature" no longer serves any purpose if you don't, as it doesn't exclude anything.

It's often a pointless distinction to make (see also: anything that labels itself as "organic"), but it's a convenient shorthand to describe a category of interactions that people often want to talk about.

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

#262

Post by theaussiestew »

BuffaloBagel wrote: post #220

Cool side story is the American tech millionaire who has dedicated his life and fortune to the recovery of Gorongosa National Park. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregory_C._Carr https://gorongosa.org/greg-carr/

That's really inspiring, I'd love to do something similar if/when I'm more financially free. Got any other examples of people doing similar things? We definitely need more people doing this, rather than trying to get to space.

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

#263

Post by theaussiestew »

Apocryphon wrote: post #132
mysterydip wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of stories of unicorns, though. Why them and not some other animal?

There are plenty of stories of dragons, too.

So why are there so many stories of dragons, even across cultures that had little to no contact whatsoever?

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

#264

Post by mannykannot »

lvass wrote: post #180
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…

Warning: guesswork. If only females survive with this disruption, it can only be inherited from a mother, so only 1 X chromosome of a female can have it. If somehow only those females survive, there's a pool of 50% of X chromosomes of females with the mutation. The following generation would be born with half of the female population with the mutation (25% of female X chromosomes), and half of the male population dea…

> So this mutation tends to just disappear without selective pressure.

I think you are making a good case for that conclusion, and would that not imply that the mutation - or, more specifically, its most recent manifestation - arose fairly recently, i.e. subsequent to hunting for ivory becoming a serious problem for elephants?

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

#265

Post by theaussiestew »

xupybd wrote: post #68
1cvmask wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The civil war and conflict was created by white colonizers and CIA (America): https://www.africanexponent.com/post/4981-civil-war-in-mozam...

Whilst I agree that this was a proxy in the cold war and that Colonial history messed up Africa big time, I don't understand what you are trying to say here?

He's saying that it's not a case of "oh, silly uncivilised African warlords", but rather, "look at another underhanded neo-liberal operation that destabilised a region".

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

#266

Post by Apocryphon »

theaussiestew wrote: post #263
Apocryphon wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of stories of dragons, too.

So why are there so many stories of dragons, even across cultures that had little to no contact whatsoever?

There's a very interesting (but somewhat contrived) anthropological hypothesis that dragons are composites of various predator creatures that were a danger to our ancestors- birds of prey, great cats, and pythons:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Instinct_for_Dragons

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

#267

Post by [deleted] »

TameAntelope wrote: post #260
19f191ty wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Selective breeding is an important component of evolution. But evolution is certainly not just selective breeding. Population diversity whether it's through random chance, genetic drift, horizontal transfer etc. is also a key component of evolution. Equating evolution with just selective breeding is incorrect.

For what it's worth, he could have said "Selective breeding IS evolution" and his comment would read the same. The point is that selective breeding is a subset of evolution, so attempting to ask, "Isn't this just selective breeding?" would be answered with a, "No, because selective breeding is a subset of evolution." "Is this a rectangle or just a square?" "A square IS a rectangle."

[deleted]

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

#268

Post by MichaelMoser123 »

Interesting, are there any Rhino mutations without horns? Conservationists are cutting Rhino's horn, in an effort to safe them from poachers, but poachers kill them anyway, because of the horn stub that is left. https://www.savetherhino.org/thorny-issues/de-horning/

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

#269

Post by [deleted] »

throwaway69123 wrote: post #212
tw04 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Also if you buy the offical story of Covid it is this desire for exotic expensive animals with questionable natural medical benefits that caused the zootopic jump of Covid from bats to humans. So the real cost of this sort of trade now couldnt be higher.

[deleted]

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

#270

Post by vincengomes »

mysterydip wrote: post #53

What if unicorns at one point existed, but were hunted for the superstitious power of their horns, leaving only the hornless to reproduce and eventually eliminate the gene? How would we know?

No. They evolved to become fat and became rhinoceros
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