I assume it was an elephant coincidentally born without tusks, which then survived being poached thanks to the adaptation that was then passed on to subsequent offspring.
An impeccably timed advantageous mutation for an endangered species. We rely far too often on the word “coincidence” to describe what is clearly an unknown gene expression phenomenon, which gives me chills and seems to borderline the supernatural.
At what point to people throw in the towel and say, yup, God’s real? Or do we just keep saying these unexplainable things are coincidences since it somehow jives better with our worldview?
I never understood why people think that spirituality and science are mutually exclusive. In 2014, even the pope himself came out and said the Big Bang and evolution are real [0]. Maybe it’s part of the whole “works in mysterious ways” tidbit, if you believe that kind of stuff? Let’s try having an open mind.
[0] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/pope-francis-evolution-bi...
No. An existing but uncommon mutation. Previously disadvantageous.
> At what point to people throw in the towel and say, yup, God’s real?
Well . . . Occam's razor says "not now, bub."
When He stops acting in mysterious and cruel ways. He could, and this is just an example, have changed the poachers' socio-economic conditions so they wouldn't kill elephants anymore. Or he could have greatly devalued the price of ivory 100 years ago. But no, God's miracle is something that evolution can explain without a hitch. There's really no evidence of a deity at work here.
Did you ever consider the possibility that God's plan is to kill the elephants, and that them loosing their tusks is actually the Devil's work?
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 the elephants to no longer having tusks. And the mechanism that achieves this change is that the elephants with the genetic variation making them tusk-less have a higher chance of passing on the genes because they are less likely to be killed by poachers.
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.
There have only been a few generations gone by since then, but you would imagine the same factors that made the gene for tusks more successful in the first place, would start to again predominate, but it will probably take many generations for it to come back to where it was. That part, the recovery, could be called an evolutionary response.
Change in the body - more torn hymen than before - by changing the humans to no longer having hymen.
Right?
It's quite obvious that article is claiming that the process of artificial selection that involves leaving tuskless elephants alive is resulting in generations with more elephants that are tuskless. That is what the article says two paragraphs in.
But perhaps it is not that obvious to others. Will someone who found parent comment enlightening please share?
Left side: Evolution took their tusks away.
Middle: Acktually it's selection pressure acting on the population combined with random mutations that...
Right side: Evolution took their tusks away.
More charitably, pedantry is a stage of learning. Practicing until the concepts get reinforced enough that you can substitute the rule of thumb again.
It's the same pattern as the hero's journey. Start at home (the naive view), do righteous battle with the concepts, return home (to the naive view) but changed.
I was into all this stuff when I was 13, reading Dawkins and Hitchens. Blind watchmaker, selfish gene. What's interesting is that the fuel for that kind of learning is part intellectual exercise, part making sense of the world, and part superiority (other people are wrong and I'm right). And now we're doing the same thing one level up.
Now with a challenge: try writing a more accurate headline, in as many characters or less.
But that wouldn’t be as catchy and as misleading/misunderstood as the original. Anyone reading that one will assume that elephants are purposefully being born without tusk, but it’s just a ratio consequence of tusked elephants dying early.
Not only maybe a bit.. every evolutionary response is surviving and passing on something beneficial for survival/reproduction, which includes new born with it then.. come on!
It's literally pressure from environment influencing evolution.
Or an evolutionary response.
I predict that readers of this will find this to be even more pedantic than the point you made. My reasoning is that while this terminology may not matter that much to those in the know, there's harm done to the public when science is communicated in a way that implies more than is actually there.
Same different: imaginary numbers. Not less number than others. There are plenty good ideas with a poor name: zero-knowledge encryption, and so on.
My understanding of evolution is the ability to adapt and adjust to the ever-changing environment over multiple generations, and if we treat ivory poaching as an environmental danger, it makes sense for tuskless elephants to pass their genes on.
aka being born without turks
You haven't passed on any genes until you have fertil offspring. Being born is of course necessary, but far from sufficient.
`Elephants without tusks in ‘evolutionary response’ to poachers`
Penalties for poaching are generally paid with lead.
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.
Unlike a goose that keeps laying eggs, tusks don't grow back. They are actually teeth.
And even if poachers did remove tusks humanely. Having no tusks or having infected tusk wounds would be a big disadvantage.
All I am saying is nature will find a way.
Or micro plastics.
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", imho.
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?
