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Elephants born without tusks in ‘evolutionary response’ to poachers (2021)

telegraph.co.uk

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Re: Elephants born without tusks in ‘evolutionary response’ to poachers (2021)

#81

Post by refurb »

owaislone wrote: post #10
Ygg2 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are being pendantic. It's literally pressure from environment influencing evolution. Or an evolutionary response.

Te point OP is making is that being born without tusks is just a random chance, not a response to anything but as a result of this random chance, this elephant has a higher chance of living longer and having more babies resulting in higher chance of the "tuskless gene" being passed on to future generations. The distinction is important to understand evolution correctly. A lot of evolution deniers have a problem with…

You are correct.

Evolution is not a process by which beneficial genes are created, it's one where they are filtered for.

Across thousands of baby elephants there are a likely hundreds of unique genetic differences. Most are worthless, some are detrimental, and some of beneficial. Evolution is just the process by which the beneficial ones thrive.

Re: Elephants born without tusks in ‘evolutionary response’ to poachers (2021)

#82

Post by gumby »

sph wrote: post #34
danbruc wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without knowing anything about the general or scientific use of those terms, just by looking at the words, I think it is fine the way the title is worded. What is the actor here that responds? It is the process of evolution, in the same way you could say the climate reacts to a change in solar activity. So the process of evolution reacts to a change in the ecological system - more poachers than before - by changing t…

The issue OP has is that the article conflates cause with effect. It's not poachers that cause elephants to evolve not to have tusks. It's that some elephant got a rare mutation, and those mutated elephants aren't as targeted by poachers, thus are able to survive more easily. Plenty of popsci journos write as if nature is intelligent and driven by some purpose.

> Plenty of popsci journos write as if nature is intelligent and driven by some purpose.

You might want to read “The intentional stance” by the famous philosopher Daniel Dennett. This is a pretty useful analytic approach for many problems (e.g. we commonly say things like “the thermostat tries to keep the temperature within three degrees of its set point”).

I agree it is distressing that many people interpret such metaphors literally.

Re: Elephants born without tusks in ‘evolutionary response’ to poachers (2021)

#83

Post by [deleted] »

Aissen wrote: post #32
sunaurus wrote: post #2

Maybe I'm being a bit pedantic here, but being born without tusks is not in itself an "evolutionary response". Surviving without tusks and passing on those tuskless genes at a higher than previously normal rate is the actual evolutionary response.

Technically, the offspring themselves having more chance to be born without tusks is the "evolutionary response". Now with a challenge: try writing a more accurate headline, in as many characters or less.

[deleted]

Re: Elephants born without tusks in ‘evolutionary response’ to poachers (2021)

#84

Post by bigDinosaur »

phkahler wrote: post #75
bigDinosaur wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's amusing how downright hard it is to avoid teleological explanations of evolution. In this case it is important to note that this mutation presumably existed before poachers so they cannot be the cause of the actual genetics of tuskless elephants - but they are the cause of why the ratio is now changing. So I'd say your counterfactual is wrong: there would be a few tuskless elephants but having no evolutionary ad…

>> In this case it is important to note that this mutation presumably existed before poachers so they cannot be the cause of the actual genetics of tuskless elephants This sounds like an argument made by creationists to deny evolution. The genes were always there and we are just seeing a change in expression. When people of science have silly public debates like this, science loses. Stop being pedantic!

When it comes to random mutations what other explanation would you use? I genuinely don't see how that sounds like an argument made by creationists. A creationist will simply state that genes never evolved or that they've only had six thousand years to evolve. Yes, obviously something caused these mutations but it wasn't the poachers, the original selection effect before the poachers here was that the mutation didn't cause a decrease in fitness otherwise (which it does, as it kills males before birth).

Re: Elephants born without tusks in ‘evolutionary response’ to poachers (2021)

#85

Post by bigDinosaur »

danbruc wrote: post #70
bigDinosaur wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's amusing how downright hard it is to avoid teleological explanations of evolution. In this case it is important to note that this mutation presumably existed before poachers so they cannot be the cause of the actual genetics of tuskless elephants - but they are the cause of why the ratio is now changing. So I'd say your counterfactual is wrong: there would be a few tuskless elephants but having no evolutionary ad…

That is the way I wanted my sentence to be understood, »evolve« in »[...] would the elephants evolve to be tusk-less?« is intended to mean nothing more than become dominant due to evolution and I do not see how that word in that context could be understood as anything else.

Fair enough. I don't actually think you're wrong, to be clear, I think it's just easy to mix together related but distinct concepts here and the teleological angle makes that surprisingly easy to do (but it's almost impossible to actually avoid).

Re: Elephants born without tusks in ‘evolutionary response’ to poachers (2021)

#86

Post by 1letterunixname »

dschuetz wrote: post #20

Elephants without tusks are more likely to survive and reproduce, so while this is a "better" survival trait as part of an evolutionary process, it's not an active response. It's just a mutation that has a better chance to survive. Like that click-baity headline from the Telegraph, it has a better chance to get clicks phrasing it that way, instead of "Elephats without tusks are more likely to survive violent poachers…

Splitting hairs of "an instance of natural selection leads to a more survivable feature" vs. "the theory of evolution". Both are likely and the most likely explanations.

Re: Elephants born without tusks in ‘evolutionary response’ to poachers (2021)

#87

Post by 1letterunixname »

throw827474737 wrote: post #50
dschuetz wrote: post #20

Elephants without tusks are more likely to survive and reproduce, so while this is a "better" survival trait as part of an evolutionary process, it's not an active response. It's just a mutation that has a better chance to survive. Like that click-baity headline from the Telegraph, it has a better chance to get clicks phrasing it that way, instead of "Elephats without tusks are more likely to survive violent poachers…

The title said "evolutionary response" not active response, which is a fine term in that regard, but others said enough to that. However, I don't get how this is anything clickbaity here over your title, please explain! Its almost Godwins-law-like now that every article mentioning evolution will have this nitpicking.. Is it pedantic monday already again?

Nit: Also taco Tuesday eve.

Re: Elephants born without tusks in ‘evolutionary response’ to poachers (2021)

#88

Post by danbruc »

bigDinosaur wrote: post #85
danbruc wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is the way I wanted my sentence to be understood, »evolve« in »[...] would the elephants evolve to be tusk-less?« is intended to mean nothing more than become dominant due to evolution and I do not see how that word in that context could be understood as anything else.

Fair enough. I don't actually think you're wrong , to be clear, I think it's just easy to mix together related but distinct concepts here and the teleological angle makes that surprisingly easy to do (but it's almost impossible to actually avoid).

Isn't teleology a red herring here? We may use language that sound teleologically - nature wants this or that - but that does not imply that we actually have any teleologically world view behind that. If someone says that the universe wants to minimize the action, then I don't think they ascribe any desires to the universe [1], they just want to say that physical systems behave in a way that minimizes the action which we figured out by inspection and experiment.

[1] At least by default, they can of course clarify that they actually think the universe has desires.

Re: Elephants born without tusks in ‘evolutionary response’ to poachers (2021)

#89

Post by 1letterunixname »

once_inc wrote: post #61
randyrand wrote: post #9

Do tusk poachers usually kill? Seems stupid to kill the golden goose.

Poaching is illegal. All practical issues with sedation and humane tusk removal aside: these guys need to work fast. They shoot the animal, race over to it, hack the tusks off at breakneck speed, then disappear. Penalties for poaching are generally paid with lead.

I'm surprised that poachers use firearms rather than poisons or sedatives, risking announcing their position. A very powerful (and loud) cartridge is necessary to kill an elephant.

Also, I thought most African elephants in managed wildlife areas have their tusks cut by wildlife officials to deter poaching and save animal lives. If this were the case, perhaps attraction in mating also no longer includes tusks as a desirable characteristic since few/no individuals possess it any longer.

Re: Elephants born without tusks in ‘evolutionary response’ to poachers (2021)

#90

Post by phkahler »

bigDinosaur wrote: post #84
phkahler wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> In this case it is important to note that this mutation presumably existed before poachers so they cannot be the cause of the actual genetics of tuskless elephants This sounds like an argument made by creationists to deny evolution. The genes were always there and we are just seeing a change in expression. When people of science have silly public debates like this, science loses. Stop being pedantic!

When it comes to random mutations what other explanation would you use? I genuinely don't see how that sounds like an argument made by creationists. A creationist will simply state that genes never evolved or that they've only had six thousand years to evolve. Yes, obviously something caused these mutations but it wasn't the poachers, the original selection effect before the poachers here was that the mutation didn't…

Creationist have argued that genes don't change, but can turn on and off to create variations. Some of them use this to claim actual observed cases of evolution are not improved species, just using what was already there. Of course that argument falls down in cases where the before and after genome is sequenced and shows new changes, but they will still make the argument.
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