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Evolution, why can't the news ever get it right?

I just read a story about African elephants. It is supposed to show evolution at work because the average length of the tusks is decreasing.

Here is the story with the link.

LINK TO STORY

Elephants Evolve Smaller Tusks Due to Poaching

A species’ evolution has long been thought to take thousands of years to produce seemingly minor changes.

It appears that in at least one case, however, evolution is occurring at what seems like jet speed. In the last 150 years, the world’s elephant population has evolved much smaller tusks.

The average size of an African elephant’s tusks has gone down by half in the last century and a half. Indian elephants have undergone a similar tusk size reduction.

Experts believe the rapid evolution of the massive land mammals is due to poaching. Zoologists from Oxford University suggest that ivory poachers, who go for the largest males with the largest tusks, have caused the breeding behaviors of the animals to change rapidly in a short time.

The largest male African elephants have the largest tusks. These tusks are extremely important in elephant behavior, with the largest tusks usually resulting in more successful intimidation of smaller males or winning fights for female elephants. But when the largest animals are killed, it changes the breeding patterns of the animals. In short, without the largest males for competition, the smaller males with their smaller tusks will breed more successfully, and their offspring will have smaller tusks.

Study co-author Iain Douglas Hamilton of Save the Elephants said in the Telegraph: “What appears to be the case is that average tusk sizes have decreased greatly since the mid-19th century. The data comes from the trade statistics and from records of hunters around Africa who find that large trophies are very much harder to find. While some of this may be due to an absence of older animals, it is possible there has been a genetic selection pressure against large tusk size that outweighs their usefulness in contests with other males in winning females.”

 

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Yes, the tusks are getting smaller because of poachers. The poachers will kill elephants with large tusks, and large tusks are becoming more difficult to find, but there are other reasons for this. First, as mentioned in the article, older males are less common. The tusks take many years to grow, so removing the older elephants removes the larger tusks. But there is another reason that is sort of touched on in the article. Could it be that the elephants with the genes for larger tusks are being killed off? It is a sort of natural selection. If two elephants are walking along and there is a poacher, one has giants tusks, and the other has smaller, who is the poacher going to shoot in all likelyhood? It would be like, this is a very euphamistic idea not to be taken seriously. But if people who were tall, say over 6'3" were being killed, and this went on for hundreds of years. Those people who survived would pass on their genes which have the tendency toward being less than 6'3". So over time, less and less tall people would be born, they would still be born, but given enough time, the genes for tall people would become more and more recessive.

 

Evolution does not follow a plan, there isn't a grand design, designer or anything, it is more of a reaction to environment, conditions, food supplies and other natural stimulus. There isn't a part of the genes that is saying to itself, "if I was only three inches taller I could reach...." or "if my legs were just a half inch longer, I could run fast enough to catch...." It doesn't work that way! 

Unless your talking about the Flying Spaghetti Monster 

 

 

 

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