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Elephants evolving to be tuskless

#1
Magical Realist Offline
https://www.thinkinghumanity.com/2021/10...GbIduJfjQ4

"New scientific research conducted by evolutionary biologists has suggested that the animal kingdom is rapidly evolving as a result of human poaching and hunting. The team looked in particular at African elephants and why so many females are now being born without tusks, a process they say has been triggered by the ivory trade.


Princeton biologists Robert Pringle and Shane Campbell-Staton led the investigation. They found that between 1977 and 2004, the number of female elephants being born without tusks in Gorongosa National Park in Mozambique rose to around 33%. Normally only around 1 in 50 or 2% of elephants are born without tusks.


The scientists believe that because hunting was so endemic in Mozambique elephants with tusks were widely killed while those without tusks were left alive. This then meant that the tuskless elephants went on to breed and create the next generation who were themselves far more likely to carry the tuskless gene.

Elephants being killed for their ivory is sadly commonplace in Africa as their ivory tusks can be sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Despite this trade being illegal, a huge black market for ivory still exists.


Pringle and Campbell-Staton back up their evolutionary theory with the fact that the increase in tuskless elephants came at the exact point in the late 1970s when civil war broke out in Mozambique. Armies seeking to get money for weapons killed as many as 90% of the nation's elephant population, causing a huge impact on which animals remained in the gene pool. Between 1972 and 2005, it is thought that 5 tuskless female elephants survived for every 1 tusked elephant.


What is perhaps surprising is the tuskless trait has been passed on only to female elephants, the males remain fully tusked despite being also attacked and killed. The research team believes the tuskless gene, known as AMELX is only passed on by mothers on the X chromosome and that this is why male elephants remain in their original state.


While tusklessness may save the elephant's lives, it could have an impact on their societies and the wider eco-system.


Campbell-Staton says:


"Tusks are multi-purpose tools to strip bark from trees, dig up valuable minerals, or uncover subterranean water sources. If you don't have your tusks, your behavior shifts – you're no longer pushing trees over because you can't strip their bark."


He adds:


"This is an example of how human activity is changing the evolutionary trajectory of species all across the tree of life… humans are the most influential evolutionary pressure in history besides the five major mass extinction events."


[Based on reporting by: science alert]
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#2
C C Offline
Too bad feral hog ivory is far less commercially useful, as that might help reduce their pest-status overpopulation. In addition to the small size of the tusks crippling their value, they're largely hollow.
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#3
Zinjanthropos Offline
This case should be required reading for the anti-evolutionists. What I find amazing is that such a valuable tool in the elephant arsenal could not save it. Being able to knock down trees, strip bark, dig up valuable minerals and find water didn’t mean squat when it came to survival in this case. An actual unfavourable evolutionary trait was the key to surviving the human effect on population. And we wonder why we have differences? 

Still, I don’t know if the elephants are going to make it long term, the survival may only be temporary and the full effect of being tuskless could hurt its chances. Should be a ripple effect also since there could be plants that were under pressure from tusked elephants and animals that may have depended on minerals, water etc the elephants provided. Plus they are living under our protection, supposedly. The whole thing taking place in Petri dish so to speak, like breeding fruit flies.

Do evolutionists have a word for a perceived or actual weak trait becoming the key to survival?
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#4
Syne Offline
(Oct 28, 2021 10:44 AM)Zinjanthropos Wrote: This case should be required reading for the anti-evolutionists.

Except this is no different from people breeding dogs to be smaller, by favoring the smaller to breed, like leaving the tuskless elephants alive to breed. Selecting traits to breed in or out of a species doesn't, itself, support widely diverse speciation.

Quote:Do evolutionists have a word for a perceived or actual weak trait becoming the key to survival?
Every random mutation has the potential to enhance or degrade the survival of a species. So in a sense, the vulnerability to mutation is both a weakness and a boon to survival.
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#5
Zinjanthropos Offline
(Oct 28, 2021 04:46 PM)Syne Wrote:
Quote:Do evolutionists have a word for a perceived or actual weak trait becoming the key to survival?
Every random mutation has the potential to enhance or degrade the survival of a species. So in a sense, the vulnerability to mutation is both a weakness and a boon to survival.

Good answer but is there a word for it?

Having the tuskers die out is almost apocalyptic to an elephant population one might think. I wonder just how many weak traits became part of human evolution? Could we have lost the tallest, the strongest, the fastest etc throughout our evolutionary history? What about the tail, consensus is we lost it when coming out of trees, but what if having a tail was dangerous and spelled death for the owner for whatever reason? I don’t know what that would be, just trying to relate to elephants.
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#6
Syne Offline
Vestigial traits are ones that no long aid survival, but they persist because they don't endanger survival either.

Again, we have bred some dog breeds so much that they can no longer mate naturally. Artificial means keep the breed going. The breed is kept alive by the market for it.
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#7
Zinjanthropos Offline
I would think that having a tail and moving to the plains for whatever reason might make you more easily caught by predator. Either tail slows you down or it’s something a predator can get hold idk. Yet I’ve heard it was gradual. I don’t know which group of our ancestors benefited most, I don’t think hominid populations were high, so change may have happened as rapid as these elephants experienced. Usually if one trait becomes a risk for species survival then it’s good to have a backup plan I guess.
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