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Female African elephants are evolving without tusks due to ivory poaching

512 points by amrrs 5y ago

kevwals 5y ago
Poaching and hunting play a part in this one as they slowly eliminate elephants with tusks. Thus, huskless elephants are mating with each other—results in the birth of huskless elephants.
gpt5 5y ago
While sad as a whole, the responsiveness of evolution is beautiful in this case. It also demonstrates that human efforts to stop poaching have not been successful (otherwise this evolution wouldn’t happen), but luckily, nature responds.
- lmilcin 5y ago
  Put this in context of a lot of other species who were not able to evolve a mechanism like that. The way I understand this there was likely a very small population of elephants already without tusks, maybe some kind of genetic defect that happened to be an advantage once you add greedy people into the mix. Or what else is possible is that there was one off mutation that produced small family of elephants that poachers wouldn't touch and these spread over decades. Think about this, if today Covid mutated to kill almost all people but spared 0.1% with a certain gene, you would suddenly observe entire human population becoming immune to Covid. This does not necessarily mean any new genetic material or "nature responding". Maybe nobody noticed the gene and it suddenly became very visible and comprising large part of population (while it declined dramatically as elephant population did). We may have missed elephants without tusks because they were just freak of nature but now they become proliferating because it becomes an advantage. EDIT: Selective pressure is part of evolution process, but it is not enough for evolution. Evolution requires both mutation AND selection. So, if the mutation was present BEFORE poachers happened, you can't really say that Mother Nature RESPONDED to poaching by evolving new mechanism. The word "response" implies causal relationship between poachers and mutation+selection of better equipped elephants. But if the mutation has already been present then there is no causal relationship and this wasn't a new mechanism.
  - jalgos_eminator 5y ago
    > This does not necessarily mean any new genetic material or "nature responding". But this is exactly how evolution works. There are always mutations in every generation, and sometimes those mutations are beneficial. These genes are being selected by the organism's environment, and if the environment changes, then the genes that are selected will be different. That is "nature responding". Elephants without tusks (or very small ones) are more likely to survive and produce offspring.
  - KiranRao0 5y ago
    I would argue what you describe is Evolution as broken into the two pieces: Genetic Drift and Natural Selection. Genetic Drift is always occurring randomly. Some elephants had a "genetic defect" to live without tusks before poaching. Some humans had the 0.1% resistance to the hypothetical super-covid before the disease. As new environmental conditions emerge (human poaching, hypothetical super-covid, etc), some genes are far better adapted to the new environment (tuskless, covid resistance, etc). Those genes then thrive in the new environment and consume the available resources left by those killed off.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - addicted 5y ago
      > What I mean is that it is possible (and I think very likely) this isn't feat of nature suddenly evolving some new defense mechanism as response to poachers. That's not how evolution works. Evolution doesn't ever involve a "feat of nature suddenly evolving defense mechanisms". I don't understand this comment, unless it's a way to say the above, that evolution does not involve sudden spontaneous changes in response to an external stimuli.
- geoffmanning 5y ago
  Not sure 'beautiful' or 'lucky' are words i'd use to describe it. Did you catch that the males of tuskless mothers generally don't survive, decimating the male population? It's a tragic and desperate response, though quite incredible that such a dramatic evolutionary trait can occur. It makes me wonder what we could become, if only...
  - _jal 5y ago
    > if only... If only humans were harvested for bony growths?
    - geoffmanning 5y ago
      LOL. Yes.
    - kuratkull 5y ago
      Tusks are not bones
  - teeray 5y ago
    Life, uh, finds a way…
  - vmception 5y ago
    Beautiful, lucky, bad Incredible, good
    - geoffmanning 5y ago
      Not quite sure what you're getting at. The definitions of those words can't simply be categorized as good or bad. Beautiful and lucky do, however, somewhat infer a positive outcome in the context they were used. Incredible infers neither positive nor negative. It means that it's simply extraordinary that such a thing could occur, outside the bounds of previous beliefs.
      - vmception 5y ago
- officialjunk 5y ago
  but the tusks had a purpose to defend and now they are defenseless.
  - asdff 5y ago
    Stomping is a common way for elephants to deal with predators. Tusks are used a lot as a tool though.
  - croes 5y ago
    If the probability to get killed for the tusks is higher than get killed by predators then it's an advantage.
    - ceejayoz 5y ago
      There are short-term and long-term advantages and disadvantages, though. From the article, it sounds like this may have protected them from human predation, but there may be significant long-term negative impacts on the species due to the lack of viable male offspring. Survive more easily for a couple generations, but go extinct as an all-female species after a couple more...
      - kadoban 5y ago
        What do the males die of exactly? Not clear to me.
        ceejayoz 5y ago
        Seems like the mutation kills male embryos. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abe7389 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abe7389 > Survey data revealed tusk-inheritance patterns consistent with an X chromosome–linked dominant, male-lethal trait. Whole-genome scans implicated two candidate genes with known roles in mammalian tooth development (AMELX and MEP1a), including the formation of enamel, dentin, cementum, and the periodontium. One of these loci (AMELX) is associated with an X-linked dominant, male-lethal syndrome in humans that diminishes the growth of maxillary lateral incisors (homologous to elephant tusks).
- asdff 5y ago
  Its important to realize what this "response" actually is. Nature isn't actively doing anything. You have 100 elephants, maybe 5 are typically born without tusks. Suddenly you kill the other 95 for their tusks, leaving behind those 5 to survive and reproduce and next generation, 33 of your 100 elephants are without tusks or something like that. Over time, humans are acting as a predator in the environment, driving a selective pressure that reduces the fitness of the tusk trait relative to the no tusk trait
  - croes 5y ago
    Nature is never doing anything.
    - elwell 5y ago
      This is both true and false.
  - lowkey_ 5y ago
    I think the above commenter recognized that; that's exactly how these evolutions pretty much always work in nature, not unique to this case.
    - ehsankia 5y ago
      Right, but "natural selection" generally doesn't include human influence, but that's semantics. Would you also say that fruits that are selectively bred to be bigger and juicier are also under the influence of "natural selection"?
      - lowkey_ 5y ago
        I wouldn't, because a fruit bred to be bigger and juicier is engineered by humans for their own benefit, while an elephant evolving to not have tusks is evolution going against human benefit. I believe natural selection includes the influence of any species related to the species in question as predator or prey, and humans in this case are predators. We may historically be responsible for far more processes of natural selection than we're aware of! You're right that it's exceedingly rare to see us so directly play a role in natural selection today (as opposed to indirectly through affecting the environment), which makes this very interesting.
- cromka 5y ago
  I am not sure you read the article, because the number of large-scale side effects this single evolutionary treat evokes is in rather starting contrast with your "the responsiveness of evolution is beautiful in this case."
- phkahler 5y ago
  It's also interesting that a single mutation can cause this lack of tusks. That reinforces another concept for me - the ability to adapt is also important and has been selected for. Meaning simple genes to define structure are preferable to complex sets of them. On a related note, if "ability to evolve" is a characteristic that can be selected for that would explain why all complex life uses sexual reproduction. Mixing genes offers such advantages that most everything that can't do it is still basically bacteria.
  - what_is_orcas 5y ago
    > It's also interesting that a single mutation can cause this lack of tusks. That reinforces another concept for me - the ability to adapt is also important and has been selected for. Meaning simple genes to define structure are preferable to complex sets of them. I wouldn't get too attached to that idea... in a lot of cases, having one gene responsible for producing a phenotype can be a very bad thing, like oncogenes (responsible for the growth of cancers) and a bunch that determine development and/or aging. > On a related note, if "ability to evolve" is a characteristic that can be selected for that would explain why all complex life uses sexual reproduction. Mixing genes offers such advantages that most everything that can't do it is still basically bacteria. Again, sometimes. There are lizards and bugs that clone themselves (parthanogenesis) which can be really handy for when the population isn't doing so hot.
- redleggedfrog 5y ago
  It's too bad there is not a gene for making the tusk highly radioactive or shoot out like rockets at the poachers. I guess that's asking a lot of evolution - it's already done a lot for us.
  - UnFleshedOne 5y ago
    lol, elephants would be wiped out in a few years if they start doing something like that. First rule of dealing with humans is not to be too effective at it.
nyc111 5y ago
In the Science article they wrote, “Poaching resulted in strong selection that favored tusklessness amid a rapid population decline.” And, “Whole-genome scans implicated two candidate genes with known roles in mammalian tooth development (AMELX and MEP1a), including the formation of enamel, dentin, cementum, and the periodontium.” So, there was a change in the genes, but how do they connect this fact with poaching? I don’t see the relation. Surely, elephants themselves, cannot decide to change their genetics as a reaction to poaching.
- duskwuff 5y ago
  > how do they connect this fact with poaching? Poachers kill elephants for their tusks. A poacher won't kill an elephant with partially formed or no tusks, as it has no value to them. This allows elephants with the tuskless gene to survive and eventually reproduce where other elephants would not.
- bussierem 5y ago
  Evolution works thanks to natural pressures -- in this case, a mutation in the gene gives an elephant no tusks, and thanks to this they are not killed by poachers. That elephant is lucky enough to survive to pass on its DNA. The recessive gene, over many generations, grows more dominant as more and more elephants "benefit" from having no tusks by not being hunted. So the elephants aren't reacting to poaching -- the "reaction" is a random mutation that happens to align with external pressures, causing a shift in genetics for the population.
- aaaaaaaaaaab 5y ago
  Random mutations happen all the time. If there’s selection pressure that favors a given mutation, it will proliferate.
  - geoffmanning 5y ago
    Just throwing it out there; i know it's scientifically accepted that genetic mutations are simply random and the ones that just so happen to be helpful are propagated by natural selection, but i sometimes wonder that 'random' is a word akin to 'magic' that describes a process we do not quite understand. Specifically in the context of evolution, i wonder if genetic mutations aren't as random as we believe it to be, but that life is more 'intelligent' than we give it credit for, and mutations are, if not always at least sometimes, an intentional response to changes in their environment. I'd be very interested to see more research in the way that genetic mutations may be influenced by external stimuli. Not an idea i deeply hold as a truth, but fun to think about, and science doesn't expand by believing we've got it all figured out.
bogwog 5y ago
> Researchers found the number of tuskless female elephants in Mozambique increased by almost double over 30 years. This overlaps with a period of civil conflict, where armed forces slaughtered 90% of the elephant population to produce ivory. This ivory went on to finance the conflict. People suck.
- mpfundstein 5y ago
  nice generalisation. i for once never thought even remotely about slaughtering a freaking elephant in order to get the tusks. yes lots of people are bad and do bad things , but that does not mean that all people suck.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - SamBam 5y ago
    #NotAllPeople
- 1cvmask 5y ago
  The civil war and conflict was created by white colonizers and CIA (America): https://www.africanexponent.com/post/4981-civil-war-in-mozambique-was-created-by-the-colonizers https://www.africanexponent.com/post/4981-civil-war-in-mozam...
  - xupybd 5y ago
    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?
    - theaussiestew 5y ago
      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".
tombert 5y ago
Honest question from someone who knows virtually nothing about chemistry or material science: is there a difference in quality between synthetic and natural ivory? If not, why is poaching even still a viable market?
- estaseuropano 5y ago
  Superstition. Elephants and tigers are not hunted for inherent qualities of their bodies, but for the belief that consumption of their parts in various ways helps health/virility/...
  - bilekas 5y ago
    Superstition really seems to be one of the largest factor when it comes to animal hunting/consumption. It's ridiculous and a little bit ironic that something supposedly to bring good fortune will result in wide scale killing of animals, living earthlings.
    - nickff 5y ago
      >"It's ridiculous and a little bit ironic that something supposedly to bring good fortune will result in wide scale killing of animals, living earthlings." How is this ironic? Most cultures have prized animal products throughout recorded history, and many have practiced sacrifices, which is literally the killing of the being.
      - lowkey_ 5y ago
        Not the parent, but the irony is that to bring good fortune, you bring incredible misfortune (extinction, even) upon other living things.
        nickff 5y ago
        It seems like the comment I responded to was referring to something like an 'incongruity', and saying it was '[situational] irony', but it doesn't really satisfy the definition of situational irony (from wikipedia): >"Situational irony: The disparity of intention and result; when the result of an action is contrary to the desired or expected effect." In this specific case, the intention of extracting animal products caused the animals to be killed, which is not contrary to the expected effect (unfortunate as it may be).
jsnell 5y ago
In case anyone is wondering about the size of the effect, https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/wildlife-watch-news-tuskless-elephants-behavior-change https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/wildlife-... has the numbers. Before the war, 2-4% of female elephants were tuskless. Now 32% of newly born ones are. So it's a significant change, but it's not like this property was coming out of nowhere. It started off about as common as humans having green eyes.
- csours 5y ago
  Evolution is an umbrella term, but in the most general form, evolution means a change in genetics in a population over time. So yes, the genetic 'option' was there before, but it is advantageous now.
  - VeninVidiaVicii 5y ago
    And this is why genetic diversity is a good thing.
    - rustyminnow 5y ago
      Hmm in the context of the article, I'm not so sure it's a good thing. Later on they mention that if this genetic trait gets passed on to males, they die. So along with hunting, males are doubly at risk. It may be advantageous for the survival of an individual to be born without tusks, but it doesn't sound too good for the survival of the species.
      - netcan 5y ago
        The trait may or may not be advantageous. Diversity is. In this case the selective pressure is poaching, but selective pressures are constant. Diversity is a bank of genetics that the population can draw from to adapt and survive. Traits that are rare, are often rare because of shortcomings. But if environmental changes make that tradeoff worthwhile, it can be made. Meanwhile, evolution doesn't stop. Once the trait/gene is common there is positive selective pressure on complementary genes. Over time, these may mitigate or compensate for the negative traits that have acquired. Of course, on the timescales that humans tend to selectively pressure species, there isn't time for all this elegance to emerge, usually.
Ansil849 5y ago
For people who are not from the region but are criticizing poaching...maybe you should make sure your own house is clean before throwing stones at others. How many people critiquing this have industrial animal farms in their country, for example? And just to be clear: I don't mean that vile acts like poaching shouldn't be criticized, I more find the hypocrisy extremely grating, especially when it comes from meat eaters. And ah yes, the downvotes. Sorry, but if you eat animals and yet critique poaching, then you are a hypocrite who does not give a fuck about animal welfare (because if you did, you wouldn't kill them).
- tjpnz 5y ago
  I've been a vegetarian my whole life yet find this argument nonsensical. The animals being poached are in many cases on the verge of extinction, the animals raised on industrial farms are not. While I do find the idea of killing animals abhorrent the industrial process is significantly more humane than what happens to poached animals, which are typically left to slowly bleed to death or are permanently maimed.
  - aaron695 5y ago
    > which are typically left to slowly bleed to death or are permanently maimed. 100% hacker news. 100% the lifestyle of HN Live in a cage your whole life then get executed. Or live 100% free, might die naturally, might be poached latter in life but are a pussy worried about bleeding out? Obviously we execute many infants and children in the vegetarian livestock world. But they are males commonly, like in dairy and eggs. And again on HN dead male children don't count. Boko Haram massacres and sends to die in battle an order of magnitude more boys. And the Bacha bazi sex boys of Afghanistan.... don't talk about them. Poaching feeds and educates a family for a year, you also get out and exercise poaching and take personal risk in a world of poverty which the West doesn't care about. Industrial farming feeds fat rich Americans more lazy food. Poaching does ruin tourism so it does need to be fought. It costs poor people money, which in these communities is lives.
- geoffmanning 5y ago
  Somewhat of a good point, however, life sustains life. Not quite the same thing as killing an animal for some made up concept like money. That said, i personally don't eat mammals because i feel like they have too much in common with us, and science is learning more and more just how much so. I do eat birds and fish.
1cvmask 5y ago
This all stemmed from the CIA (and white colonizers) involvement in creating the Mozambique civil war. The civil war was then partially financed by selling ivory tusks. Hence the culling of the elephants with tusks. The tuskless went untouched and managed to reproduce in larger ratios. https://www.africanexponent.com/post/4981-civil-war-in-mozambique-was-created-by-the-colonizers https://www.africanexponent.com/post/4981-civil-war-in-mozam...
- bpodgursky 5y ago
  Ivory poaching does not all stem from the Mozambique civil war. It stems from Ivory being expensive and these countries being poor with weak policing.
- slibhb 5y ago
  Your decision to ascribe responsibility to "the CIA (and white colonizers)" for starting a war but not to the people who actually kill the elephants is entirely arbitrary.
- bitcurious 5y ago
  There are many pre-1947 examples of Ivory in (domestic) African art, and the oldest piece in the world dates to ~38000BCe, found in present day Germany.
- christkv 5y ago
  I would look at who buys ivory for the reason poaching became endemic https://www.nationalgeographic.com/pages/article/150812-elephant-ivory-demand-wildlife-trafficking-china-world https://www.nationalgeographic.com/pages/article/150812-elep...
mysterydip 5y ago
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?
- pm215 5y ago
  I think we'd expect to see vestiges of the no-longer-outwardly-visible horn in the skeleton and perhaps during fetal development, like with human tails.
- max_ 5y ago
  There is anthropological work claiming that unicorns were actually a mis-depiction of the single horn rhinoceros.
- Apocryphon 5y ago
  Where are all of the heirloom artifacts made from unicorn ivory?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- xupybd 5y ago
  The fossil record. If they were hunted then there might be a cultural record as well.
- BitwiseFool 5y ago
  There are plenty of horses and horse-ancestors in the fossil record. We would at least expect to see some horn material preserved. Failing that, there would be evidence on the skull itself due to how the attachment of the horn would leave evidence of its existence on the bone of the skull. You would probably also expect to see some horns in archaeological caches. I know they sometimes find narwhal tusks in burial sites. Interestingly enough, there was a creature that very much looks like a unicorn, but it is a rhinoceros and not an equine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elasmotherium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elasmotherium
Rphad 5y ago
This reminds me of this study that polled academics and students about the evolutive process that happens. The results are quite decieving. https://journals.openedition.org/ress/2698 https://journals.openedition.org/ress/2698
- SamBam 5y ago
  For those who don't want to read a long French article: the conclusion (as I understood it) is that most people imagine teleological, or goal-driven (the authors describe it as "finalist") reasons for this very change in tusks. That is, even when the subjects consider that poaching may be the cause in the change in tusk allele frequency, they say it's because the elephants "want" not to have tusks, or that evolution is "deliberately" evolving away from tusks in order to protect the elephants. This is in contrast to the actual explanation, which is simply that if you kill the elephants with the tusks alleles and prevent them from breeding, you'll have fewer of those alleles in the subsequent generations. I'd say this result is not so "deceiving," as someone who has prepared evolution curriculum in the past, the teleological explanation is extremely seductive, even for educated people.
AtNightWeCode 5y ago
Evolution is in general very slow when it comes to animals. I have my doubts if poaching is the true cause or if there is some environmental reason.
- ceejayoz 5y ago
  Evolution needn't be slow. We've evolved (via unnatural selection) chickens over just a few decades to have more and more white breast meat, to the point where they can't stand up on their own. We've rapidly evolved dog breeds to have characteristics we covet.
- nemo44x 5y ago
  Because the ones with tusks are being removed from pool (killed) before they can reproduce. Therefore their genes are not replicated and that characteristic goes away. It’s more selection than “evolution” but they work together.
- treeman79 5y ago
  This could be better defined as breeding for specific traits. Elephants without tusks are the ones “allowed” to breed.
- woodruffw 5y ago
  The article is explicit that it's an environmental pressure selecting for a previously recessive trait, similarly to Peppered moths during the Industrial Revolution[1]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peppered_moth_evolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peppered_moth_evolution
- Jyaif 5y ago
  If there was a deadly virus that killed human that do not have blue eyes, the entire human population would "evolve" to having blue eyes very quickly. This is exactly what happened with the tusk-less elephants.
  - AtNightWeCode 5y ago
    Some eye colors are dominant. We still have a lot of different eye colors.
chiefalchemist 5y ago
> Published in Science on Thursday, the study looked at the genetic changes engineered due to mass poaching for ivory. This interpretation of evolution is a myth that needs to be busted. Nothing is being "engineered". What is happening is simply: no tusks is an advantage. That is, no tusks means less likely to be hunted / killed. As a result, the tusk genes in the gene pool are less available. The no-tusks genes more. In short, and ultra-simplified, evolution is reactive.
eevilspock 5y ago
Makes me wonder how human activity is evolving our very own genetic pool. Examples: competition vs cooperation, male vs female height, our immune system. We have long had a culture where men prefer mates that are shorter than them, and women prefer mates that are taller. This results in constant pressure on the pool resulting in men being on average taller than women. Will this change over time as we outgrow this rather primitive preference? (Sadly, even many feminist women have clung to this preference.) Not all species "prefer" that the male is bigger or stronger than the female. An obvious one is our reliance on modern medical technology, and drugs in particular. Are our bodies becoming less able to fend off disease? The most important one for me is the balance between those genes that give us our selfishness and those that give us empathy and love. What impact does an ever more individualistic culture and an economic system that defines selfishness as a virtue have on our gene pool?
cabalamat 5y ago
> Relentless ivory hunting over decades has caused elephants to evolve in a way we never imagined them to. This is only true if "we" have very little imagination.
- deleted 5y ago
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ChrisArchitect 5y ago
Only the fourteenth story about this in the past week on here
asow92 5y ago
Humanity is a part of nature and we are drivers of an epochal natural selection (and extinction) event. This has already happened and will continue to do so.
ygmelnikova 5y ago
Similar results with my Drosophila in grade 9.
mulmen 5y ago
Is this actually evolution or just selective breeding? By killing elephants with tusks the poachers are favoring elephants with the no-tusk gene. This isn't a lot different than killing a dog that bites sheep, which is how we bred herding dogs. Or a wolf that eats your baby, which is how we domesticated dogs. This trait already existed so it certainly wasn't "engineered due to mass poaching for ivory" as claimed.
- smk_ 5y ago
  Selective breeding is one form of evolution.
  - vlz 5y ago
    This is the correct differentiation. One possible selection mechanism of evolution is selective breeding. Others are predators, changes in the habitat etc.
    - proto-n 5y ago
      I'd argue this is more a case of (human) predators though, rather than intentional breeding.
- TehCorwiz 5y ago
  Evolution IS selective breeding. The members of a species most fit for their environment are successful in procreation. The female elephants without tusks are surviving at higher rates which is resulting in more offspring with no tusks. This causes a shift in the population where a trait previously with no or little benefit becomes advantageous and the shift in genetic makeup of the whole population evolves.
  - engineer_22 5y ago
    But we don't commonly run around saying Arabians and Morgans are different because of evolution. Neither do we say that chihuahua's and labradors have evolved into their present form. In my humble opinion "evolution" refers to speciation, which takes very many generations.
beebmam 5y ago
With discussions around evolution, I try to keep in mind that the main pressure for evolution is from natural selection, and natural selection works on death. Plenty of species have been "naturally selected" for total extermination. It's difficult to keep ethics out of discussions when facing the reality of life: that there is a massive amount of death and suffering, and it's a terrifying thing we're all forced into, including these elephants.
PradeetPatel 5y ago
At the risk of being downvoted to oblivion, is there such thing as ethicially sourced ivory? If not, I imagine the only reasonable thing to do would be to educate and raise awareness on the catastrophic impact poaching has on the elephant species as a whole.
- sva_ 5y ago
  Great plan, but I'm pretty sure that people who buy ivory don't give a damn about elephants.
- notriddle 5y ago
  Injection-molded plastic? I kid. I kid. Obviously, injection-molded plastic is bad for the environment, regardless of its history as an "ethical source of ivory."
- rich_sasha 5y ago
  I remember reading about the very thing, sold by one of the wildlife reserves, coming only from naturally deceased animals. There's also other species that have comparable bones. Supposedly, the melting permafrost is drowning the ivory market with mammoth ivory (which somehow is a cheap counterfeit, not an awesome curiosity): https://www.wired.co.uk/article/mammoth-tusk-hunters-russia-china https://www.wired.co.uk/article/mammoth-tusk-hunters-russia-...
- aziaziazi 5y ago
  It depends on your owns consideration of what is ethic : some animist may not consider ethic to take part off a dead corpse. Others may draw the line between wild and bred animals. You may also consider that it is ethic to kill a living being if you do it in an « honorable » way (use your own definition of honorable) , as in coridas or hunting.
- q1w2 5y ago
  This is a fantastic question - as this is indeed done for other African animals, like crocodiles. The biggest issue is that elephants cannot be profitably raised in captivity - they require too much food, too much space, and take too long to produce tusks. ...and if you allow them to roam in reserves, then poachers shoot them. I do wonder if it might work in another part of the world that could offer better security for large elephant reserves, without them impacting the native habitat. It has also been tried with tusks obtained by elephants that naturally died, and that program failed due to smugglers bribing officials to insert poached ivory into the auctions [0]. [0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/06/13/these-african-nations-want-to-sell-a-fortune-of-legal-ivory-bad-idea-scientists-say/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/20... I think the underlying issue is that demand is so high that there wouldn't be anywhere on Earth that could produce enough to stop cheap poaching in Africa, so it's easier to simply ban the trade entirely. Maybe there's an opportunity for lab-grown ivory? [1] [1] https://cen.acs.org/articles/96/i4/synthetic-horns-tusks-offer-hope.html https://cen.acs.org/articles/96/i4/synthetic-horns-tusks-off...
boringg 5y ago
That is both fascinating and deeply sad at the same time.
mmoskal 5y ago
Not sure about the linked article, but the paper was also mentioned in last week The Economist, and it said that the number of tusk-less elephants was already dropping (it peaked 50% and now is 33%) due to conservation efforts.
aaron695 5y ago
This is old news. It's been discussed for decades. Generally the lack of tusks was not definitely considered due to poaching directly causing evolution/selective pressure outside of the fake news media. ie. Genetic drift - https://blog.waikato.ac.nz/bioblog/2008/08/tuskless-elephants-natural-sel/ https://blog.waikato.ac.nz/bioblog/2008/08/tuskless-elephant... What would be interesting here is if genetics has proven it's due to selective pressure and strongly indicates poaching. Things like removing elephant tusks from live animals (as they do) would increase tusklessness as well. You see this with polled livestock, you have to remove all horns when a few are polled else the horned animals dominate.
BuffaloBagel 5y ago
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://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregory_C._Carr https://gorongosa.org/greg-carr/ https://gorongosa.org/greg-carr/
- theaussiestew 5y ago
  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.
ddlsmurf 5y ago
This is such a weird to put eugenics. Say I kill all blue eyed people, would you then say "People are evolving brown eyes due to this guy" ?
- maxerickson 5y ago
  It's not a consequence intended by ivory poachers.
  - ddlsmurf 5y ago
    Alright, eugenics wasn't the right word. But still this isn't evolution in the same way getting a medical intervention isn't. If you want to include everything we do as part of evolution, which is a defensible position, then all murders would be natural, this is not a practical perspective for a society.
    - maxerickson 5y ago
      What implications does murder being natural carry? For instance, most responses to murder are natural in exactly the same sense that murder is natural. Things like a legal system and imprisonment are sophisticated group responses to murder, but they aren't somehow separate from our nature because of that, they are part of it.
bambax 5y ago
Elephants are not "evolving" and it's not a "response" to poaching! Poachers killed elephants with tusks, and as a consequence elephants without tusks have a reproductive advantage. This is more like dog breeding than about nature fighting back.
- dissent 5y ago
  Disagreed. This really is natural selection and not artificial selection. The poachers aren't selectively breeding for elephants without tusks. Quite the opposite. You are correct that it's a tautology - the elephants remaining are the ones without tusks - but that's exactly how natural selection works.
  - bambax 5y ago
    > The poachers aren't selectively breeding for elephants without tusks Yes they are, that is exactly what they are doing. There is nothing natural about it. It wouldn't happen if not for the poachers.
    - bakje 5y ago
      But the poachers would rather breed for elephants with tusks, that's the whole point of their poaching after all. I feel like I don't really know enough about the specifics of natural selection or evolution to have a strong opinion on this. The poaching is definitely not natural, so it feels like this is not natural selection. On the other hand, no one is deliberately breeding for this in any way, it's purely a side effect of these circumstances, which does feel more natural. You could just view the poachers as an environmental hazard to tusked elephants, in which case this would be a perfect example of natural selection.
      - bambax 5y ago
        > You could just view the poachers as an environmental hazard to tusked elephants, in which case this would be a perfect example of natural selection. Yes okay you can say this... But if you are saying that poachers/humans are part of nature, then nothing in the world is "unnatural" anymore. I think this line of reasoning, while valid, is less precise and less interesting.
knuthsat 5y ago
If humans can modify the animals in the environment this fast, I see no reason why we just cannot assume that most of the living wild animals are already a result of humans doing the selection. I was always quite confused by the fact that most animals look quite nice but given these results I guess humans can extinguish the ugly and leave the beautiful.
ipaddr 5y ago
I wonder how long tusk vs non tusked females live in a poachfree environment.
MichaelMoser123 5y ago
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/ https://www.savetherhino.org/thorny-issues/de-horning/
luxuryballs 5y ago
Sounds like the poachers are scientists now.
- gremloni 5y ago
  Do they meticulously record their data? Checkmate.
Pinegulf 5y ago
Selection at work. I speculate that fish size is undergoing similar effect due to fishing-net eye-sizes.
SavantIdiot 5y ago
At least 6 threads here claiming selective breeding is really just evolution and it is a semantic issue. Would any experts please step up and clarify this?
ThinkBeat 5y ago
A lot of elephants are killed for the ivory in their tusks Some elephants are born without tusks and live much longer. Natural mating between tuskless elephants will dramatically increase. This will result in the trait being propagated rapidly.
- IanSanders 5y ago
  >This will result in the trait being propagated rapidly. Another comment by Stevvo mentioned > ... a trait that could negatively impact a female's chance of survival AND kills 100% of her male offspring.
Markoff 5y ago
I would like to see numbrs for elephant population, considering this study takes into consideration 30 years of heavy poaching and average life of african elephant is at least 60-70 years, couldn't this be just smaller sample group? so obviously if you kill 90% of elephants and leave only 10%, most of them tuskless, their offsprings will be much more commonly tuskless, though it doesn't mean it won't return back by itself over time
anonu 5y ago
Is this how evolution works? The article implies a cause and effect. But i always thought genetic variation was random and if that variation conferred some advantage in the world, it would dominate over many 1000s of years. Also, i imagine elephants have long gestation periods and live longer than say your average single cell organism. Meaning the "evolution cycle" if you will, is much more drawn out..
mleonhard 5y ago
Has anyone tried raising elephants using industrial livestock methods, for harvesting ivory and reducing the price to reduce poaching? I expect that selective breeding could yield elephants that produce large amounts of ivory continuously. Elephant generation time is a minimum of 11 years (2 years gestation and 9 years for females to reach sexual maturity). The project would take many years. Other animals produce ivory. Common warthog has a 2-year generation time. Hippo is 7 years. Walrus is 6 years. Narwhal is 7 years.

512 points by amrrs 5y ago

Poaching and hunting play a part in this one as they slowly eliminate elephants with tusks. Thus, huskless elephants are mating with each other—results in the birth of huskless elephants.

gpt5 5y ago

While sad as a whole, the responsiveness of evolution is beautiful in this case. It also demonstrates that human efforts to stop poaching have not been successful (otherwise this evolution wouldn’t happen), but luckily, nature responds.

lmilcin 5y ago
Put this in context of a lot of other species who were not able to evolve a mechanism like that. The way I understand this there was likely a very small population of elephants already without tusks, maybe some kind of genetic defect that happened to be an advantage once you add greedy people into the mix. Or what else is possible is that there was one off mutation that produced small family of elephants that poachers wouldn't touch and these spread over decades. Think about this, if today Covid mutated to kill almost all people but spared 0.1% with a certain gene, you would suddenly observe entire human population becoming immune to Covid. This does not necessarily mean any new genetic material or "nature responding". Maybe nobody noticed the gene and it suddenly became very visible and comprising large part of population (while it declined dramatically as elephant population did). We may have missed elephants without tusks because they were just freak of nature but now they become proliferating because it becomes an advantage. EDIT: Selective pressure is part of evolution process, but it is not enough for evolution. Evolution requires both mutation AND selection. So, if the mutation was present BEFORE poachers happened, you can't really say that Mother Nature RESPONDED to poaching by evolving new mechanism. The word "response" implies causal relationship between poachers and mutation+selection of better equipped elephants. But if the mutation has already been present then there is no causal relationship and this wasn't a new mechanism.
- jalgos_eminator 5y ago
  > This does not necessarily mean any new genetic material or "nature responding". But this is exactly how evolution works. There are always mutations in every generation, and sometimes those mutations are beneficial. These genes are being selected by the organism's environment, and if the environment changes, then the genes that are selected will be different. That is "nature responding". Elephants without tusks (or very small ones) are more likely to survive and produce offspring.
- KiranRao0 5y ago
  I would argue what you describe is Evolution as broken into the two pieces: Genetic Drift and Natural Selection. Genetic Drift is always occurring randomly. Some elephants had a "genetic defect" to live without tusks before poaching. Some humans had the 0.1% resistance to the hypothetical super-covid before the disease. As new environmental conditions emerge (human poaching, hypothetical super-covid, etc), some genes are far better adapted to the new environment (tuskless, covid resistance, etc). Those genes then thrive in the new environment and consume the available resources left by those killed off.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - addicted 5y ago
    > What I mean is that it is possible (and I think very likely) this isn't feat of nature suddenly evolving some new defense mechanism as response to poachers. That's not how evolution works. Evolution doesn't ever involve a "feat of nature suddenly evolving defense mechanisms". I don't understand this comment, unless it's a way to say the above, that evolution does not involve sudden spontaneous changes in response to an external stimuli.
geoffmanning 5y ago
Not sure 'beautiful' or 'lucky' are words i'd use to describe it. Did you catch that the males of tuskless mothers generally don't survive, decimating the male population? It's a tragic and desperate response, though quite incredible that such a dramatic evolutionary trait can occur. It makes me wonder what we could become, if only...
- _jal 5y ago
  > if only... If only humans were harvested for bony growths?
  - geoffmanning 5y ago
    LOL. Yes.
  - kuratkull 5y ago
    Tusks are not bones
- teeray 5y ago
  Life, uh, finds a way…
- vmception 5y ago
  Beautiful, lucky, bad Incredible, good
  - geoffmanning 5y ago
    Not quite sure what you're getting at. The definitions of those words can't simply be categorized as good or bad. Beautiful and lucky do, however, somewhat infer a positive outcome in the context they were used. Incredible infers neither positive nor negative. It means that it's simply extraordinary that such a thing could occur, outside the bounds of previous beliefs.
    - vmception 5y ago
officialjunk 5y ago
but the tusks had a purpose to defend and now they are defenseless.
- asdff 5y ago
  Stomping is a common way for elephants to deal with predators. Tusks are used a lot as a tool though.
- croes 5y ago
  If the probability to get killed for the tusks is higher than get killed by predators then it's an advantage.
  - ceejayoz 5y ago
    There are short-term and long-term advantages and disadvantages, though. From the article, it sounds like this may have protected them from human predation, but there may be significant long-term negative impacts on the species due to the lack of viable male offspring. Survive more easily for a couple generations, but go extinct as an all-female species after a couple more...
    - kadoban 5y ago
      What do the males die of exactly? Not clear to me.
      - ceejayoz 5y ago
        Seems like the mutation kills male embryos. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abe7389 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abe7389 > Survey data revealed tusk-inheritance patterns consistent with an X chromosome–linked dominant, male-lethal trait. Whole-genome scans implicated two candidate genes with known roles in mammalian tooth development (AMELX and MEP1a), including the formation of enamel, dentin, cementum, and the periodontium. One of these loci (AMELX) is associated with an X-linked dominant, male-lethal syndrome in humans that diminishes the growth of maxillary lateral incisors (homologous to elephant tusks).
asdff 5y ago
Its important to realize what this "response" actually is. Nature isn't actively doing anything. You have 100 elephants, maybe 5 are typically born without tusks. Suddenly you kill the other 95 for their tusks, leaving behind those 5 to survive and reproduce and next generation, 33 of your 100 elephants are without tusks or something like that. Over time, humans are acting as a predator in the environment, driving a selective pressure that reduces the fitness of the tusk trait relative to the no tusk trait
- croes 5y ago
  Nature is never doing anything.
  - elwell 5y ago
    This is both true and false.
- lowkey_ 5y ago
  I think the above commenter recognized that; that's exactly how these evolutions pretty much always work in nature, not unique to this case.
  - ehsankia 5y ago
    Right, but "natural selection" generally doesn't include human influence, but that's semantics. Would you also say that fruits that are selectively bred to be bigger and juicier are also under the influence of "natural selection"?
    - lowkey_ 5y ago
      I wouldn't, because a fruit bred to be bigger and juicier is engineered by humans for their own benefit, while an elephant evolving to not have tusks is evolution going against human benefit. I believe natural selection includes the influence of any species related to the species in question as predator or prey, and humans in this case are predators. We may historically be responsible for far more processes of natural selection than we're aware of! You're right that it's exceedingly rare to see us so directly play a role in natural selection today (as opposed to indirectly through affecting the environment), which makes this very interesting.
cromka 5y ago
I am not sure you read the article, because the number of large-scale side effects this single evolutionary treat evokes is in rather starting contrast with your "the responsiveness of evolution is beautiful in this case."
phkahler 5y ago
It's also interesting that a single mutation can cause this lack of tusks. That reinforces another concept for me - the ability to adapt is also important and has been selected for. Meaning simple genes to define structure are preferable to complex sets of them. On a related note, if "ability to evolve" is a characteristic that can be selected for that would explain why all complex life uses sexual reproduction. Mixing genes offers such advantages that most everything that can't do it is still basically bacteria.
- what_is_orcas 5y ago
  > It's also interesting that a single mutation can cause this lack of tusks. That reinforces another concept for me - the ability to adapt is also important and has been selected for. Meaning simple genes to define structure are preferable to complex sets of them. I wouldn't get too attached to that idea... in a lot of cases, having one gene responsible for producing a phenotype can be a very bad thing, like oncogenes (responsible for the growth of cancers) and a bunch that determine development and/or aging. > On a related note, if "ability to evolve" is a characteristic that can be selected for that would explain why all complex life uses sexual reproduction. Mixing genes offers such advantages that most everything that can't do it is still basically bacteria. Again, sometimes. There are lizards and bugs that clone themselves (parthanogenesis) which can be really handy for when the population isn't doing so hot.
redleggedfrog 5y ago
It's too bad there is not a gene for making the tusk highly radioactive or shoot out like rockets at the poachers. I guess that's asking a lot of evolution - it's already done a lot for us.
- UnFleshedOne 5y ago
  lol, elephants would be wiped out in a few years if they start doing something like that. First rule of dealing with humans is not to be too effective at it.

nyc111 5y ago

In the Science article they wrote, “Poaching resulted in strong selection that favored tusklessness amid a rapid population decline.” And, “Whole-genome scans implicated two candidate genes with known roles in mammalian tooth development (AMELX and MEP1a), including the formation of enamel, dentin, cementum, and the periodontium.” So, there was a change in the genes, but how do they connect this fact with poaching? I don’t see the relation. Surely, elephants themselves, cannot decide to change their genetics as a reaction to poaching.

duskwuff 5y ago
> how do they connect this fact with poaching? Poachers kill elephants for their tusks. A poacher won't kill an elephant with partially formed or no tusks, as it has no value to them. This allows elephants with the tuskless gene to survive and eventually reproduce where other elephants would not.
bussierem 5y ago
Evolution works thanks to natural pressures -- in this case, a mutation in the gene gives an elephant no tusks, and thanks to this they are not killed by poachers. That elephant is lucky enough to survive to pass on its DNA. The recessive gene, over many generations, grows more dominant as more and more elephants "benefit" from having no tusks by not being hunted. So the elephants aren't reacting to poaching -- the "reaction" is a random mutation that happens to align with external pressures, causing a shift in genetics for the population.
aaaaaaaaaaab 5y ago
Random mutations happen all the time. If there’s selection pressure that favors a given mutation, it will proliferate.
- geoffmanning 5y ago
  Just throwing it out there; i know it's scientifically accepted that genetic mutations are simply random and the ones that just so happen to be helpful are propagated by natural selection, but i sometimes wonder that 'random' is a word akin to 'magic' that describes a process we do not quite understand. Specifically in the context of evolution, i wonder if genetic mutations aren't as random as we believe it to be, but that life is more 'intelligent' than we give it credit for, and mutations are, if not always at least sometimes, an intentional response to changes in their environment. I'd be very interested to see more research in the way that genetic mutations may be influenced by external stimuli. Not an idea i deeply hold as a truth, but fun to think about, and science doesn't expand by believing we've got it all figured out.

bogwog 5y ago

> Researchers found the number of tuskless female elephants in Mozambique increased by almost double over 30 years. This overlaps with a period of civil conflict, where armed forces slaughtered 90% of the elephant population to produce ivory. This ivory went on to finance the conflict. People suck.

mpfundstein 5y ago
nice generalisation. i for once never thought even remotely about slaughtering a freaking elephant in order to get the tusks. yes lots of people are bad and do bad things , but that does not mean that all people suck.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- SamBam 5y ago
  #NotAllPeople
1cvmask 5y ago
The civil war and conflict was created by white colonizers and CIA (America): https://www.africanexponent.com/post/4981-civil-war-in-mozambique-was-created-by-the-colonizers https://www.africanexponent.com/post/4981-civil-war-in-mozam...
- xupybd 5y ago
  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?
  - theaussiestew 5y ago
    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".

tombert 5y ago

Honest question from someone who knows virtually nothing about chemistry or material science: is there a difference in quality between synthetic and natural ivory? If not, why is poaching even still a viable market?

estaseuropano 5y ago
Superstition. Elephants and tigers are not hunted for inherent qualities of their bodies, but for the belief that consumption of their parts in various ways helps health/virility/...
- bilekas 5y ago
  Superstition really seems to be one of the largest factor when it comes to animal hunting/consumption. It's ridiculous and a little bit ironic that something supposedly to bring good fortune will result in wide scale killing of animals, living earthlings.
  - nickff 5y ago
    >"It's ridiculous and a little bit ironic that something supposedly to bring good fortune will result in wide scale killing of animals, living earthlings." How is this ironic? Most cultures have prized animal products throughout recorded history, and many have practiced sacrifices, which is literally the killing of the being.
    - lowkey_ 5y ago
      Not the parent, but the irony is that to bring good fortune, you bring incredible misfortune (extinction, even) upon other living things.
      - nickff 5y ago
        It seems like the comment I responded to was referring to something like an 'incongruity', and saying it was '[situational] irony', but it doesn't really satisfy the definition of situational irony (from wikipedia): >"Situational irony: The disparity of intention and result; when the result of an action is contrary to the desired or expected effect." In this specific case, the intention of extracting animal products caused the animals to be killed, which is not contrary to the expected effect (unfortunate as it may be).

jsnell 5y ago

In case anyone is wondering about the size of the effect, https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/wildlife-watch-news-tuskless-elephants-behavior-change https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/wildlife-... has the numbers. Before the war, 2-4% of female elephants were tuskless. Now 32% of newly born ones are. So it's a significant change, but it's not like this property was coming out of nowhere. It started off about as common as humans having green eyes.

csours 5y ago
Evolution is an umbrella term, but in the most general form, evolution means a change in genetics in a population over time. So yes, the genetic 'option' was there before, but it is advantageous now.
- VeninVidiaVicii 5y ago
  And this is why genetic diversity is a good thing.
  - rustyminnow 5y ago
    Hmm in the context of the article, I'm not so sure it's a good thing. Later on they mention that if this genetic trait gets passed on to males, they die. So along with hunting, males are doubly at risk. It may be advantageous for the survival of an individual to be born without tusks, but it doesn't sound too good for the survival of the species.
    - netcan 5y ago
      The trait may or may not be advantageous. Diversity is. In this case the selective pressure is poaching, but selective pressures are constant. Diversity is a bank of genetics that the population can draw from to adapt and survive. Traits that are rare, are often rare because of shortcomings. But if environmental changes make that tradeoff worthwhile, it can be made. Meanwhile, evolution doesn't stop. Once the trait/gene is common there is positive selective pressure on complementary genes. Over time, these may mitigate or compensate for the negative traits that have acquired. Of course, on the timescales that humans tend to selectively pressure species, there isn't time for all this elegance to emerge, usually.

Ansil849 5y ago

For people who are not from the region but are criticizing poaching...maybe you should make sure your own house is clean before throwing stones at others. How many people critiquing this have industrial animal farms in their country, for example? And just to be clear: I don't mean that vile acts like poaching shouldn't be criticized, I more find the hypocrisy extremely grating, especially when it comes from meat eaters. And ah yes, the downvotes. Sorry, but if you eat animals and yet critique poaching, then you are a hypocrite who does not give a fuck about animal welfare (because if you did, you wouldn't kill them).

tjpnz 5y ago
I've been a vegetarian my whole life yet find this argument nonsensical. The animals being poached are in many cases on the verge of extinction, the animals raised on industrial farms are not. While I do find the idea of killing animals abhorrent the industrial process is significantly more humane than what happens to poached animals, which are typically left to slowly bleed to death or are permanently maimed.
- aaron695 5y ago
  > which are typically left to slowly bleed to death or are permanently maimed. 100% hacker news. 100% the lifestyle of HN Live in a cage your whole life then get executed. Or live 100% free, might die naturally, might be poached latter in life but are a pussy worried about bleeding out? Obviously we execute many infants and children in the vegetarian livestock world. But they are males commonly, like in dairy and eggs. And again on HN dead male children don't count. Boko Haram massacres and sends to die in battle an order of magnitude more boys. And the Bacha bazi sex boys of Afghanistan.... don't talk about them. Poaching feeds and educates a family for a year, you also get out and exercise poaching and take personal risk in a world of poverty which the West doesn't care about. Industrial farming feeds fat rich Americans more lazy food. Poaching does ruin tourism so it does need to be fought. It costs poor people money, which in these communities is lives.
geoffmanning 5y ago
Somewhat of a good point, however, life sustains life. Not quite the same thing as killing an animal for some made up concept like money. That said, i personally don't eat mammals because i feel like they have too much in common with us, and science is learning more and more just how much so. I do eat birds and fish.

1cvmask 5y ago

This all stemmed from the CIA (and white colonizers) involvement in creating the Mozambique civil war. The civil war was then partially financed by selling ivory tusks. Hence the culling of the elephants with tusks. The tuskless went untouched and managed to reproduce in larger ratios. https://www.africanexponent.com/post/4981-civil-war-in-mozambique-was-created-by-the-colonizers https://www.africanexponent.com/post/4981-civil-war-in-mozam...

bpodgursky 5y ago
Ivory poaching does not all stem from the Mozambique civil war. It stems from Ivory being expensive and these countries being poor with weak policing.
slibhb 5y ago
Your decision to ascribe responsibility to "the CIA (and white colonizers)" for starting a war but not to the people who actually kill the elephants is entirely arbitrary.
bitcurious 5y ago
There are many pre-1947 examples of Ivory in (domestic) African art, and the oldest piece in the world dates to ~38000BCe, found in present day Germany.
christkv 5y ago
I would look at who buys ivory for the reason poaching became endemic https://www.nationalgeographic.com/pages/article/150812-elephant-ivory-demand-wildlife-trafficking-china-world https://www.nationalgeographic.com/pages/article/150812-elep...

mysterydip 5y ago

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?

pm215 5y ago
I think we'd expect to see vestiges of the no-longer-outwardly-visible horn in the skeleton and perhaps during fetal development, like with human tails.
max_ 5y ago
There is anthropological work claiming that unicorns were actually a mis-depiction of the single horn rhinoceros.
Apocryphon 5y ago
Where are all of the heirloom artifacts made from unicorn ivory?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
xupybd 5y ago
The fossil record. If they were hunted then there might be a cultural record as well.
BitwiseFool 5y ago
There are plenty of horses and horse-ancestors in the fossil record. We would at least expect to see some horn material preserved. Failing that, there would be evidence on the skull itself due to how the attachment of the horn would leave evidence of its existence on the bone of the skull. You would probably also expect to see some horns in archaeological caches. I know they sometimes find narwhal tusks in burial sites. Interestingly enough, there was a creature that very much looks like a unicorn, but it is a rhinoceros and not an equine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elasmotherium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elasmotherium

Rphad 5y ago

This reminds me of this study that polled academics and students about the evolutive process that happens. The results are quite decieving. https://journals.openedition.org/ress/2698 https://journals.openedition.org/ress/2698

SamBam 5y ago
For those who don't want to read a long French article: the conclusion (as I understood it) is that most people imagine teleological, or goal-driven (the authors describe it as "finalist") reasons for this very change in tusks. That is, even when the subjects consider that poaching may be the cause in the change in tusk allele frequency, they say it's because the elephants "want" not to have tusks, or that evolution is "deliberately" evolving away from tusks in order to protect the elephants. This is in contrast to the actual explanation, which is simply that if you kill the elephants with the tusks alleles and prevent them from breeding, you'll have fewer of those alleles in the subsequent generations. I'd say this result is not so "deceiving," as someone who has prepared evolution curriculum in the past, the teleological explanation is extremely seductive, even for educated people.

AtNightWeCode 5y ago

Evolution is in general very slow when it comes to animals. I have my doubts if poaching is the true cause or if there is some environmental reason.

ceejayoz 5y ago
Evolution needn't be slow. We've evolved (via unnatural selection) chickens over just a few decades to have more and more white breast meat, to the point where they can't stand up on their own. We've rapidly evolved dog breeds to have characteristics we covet.
nemo44x 5y ago
Because the ones with tusks are being removed from pool (killed) before they can reproduce. Therefore their genes are not replicated and that characteristic goes away. It’s more selection than “evolution” but they work together.
treeman79 5y ago
This could be better defined as breeding for specific traits. Elephants without tusks are the ones “allowed” to breed.
woodruffw 5y ago
The article is explicit that it's an environmental pressure selecting for a previously recessive trait, similarly to Peppered moths during the Industrial Revolution[1]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peppered_moth_evolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peppered_moth_evolution
Jyaif 5y ago
If there was a deadly virus that killed human that do not have blue eyes, the entire human population would "evolve" to having blue eyes very quickly. This is exactly what happened with the tusk-less elephants.
- AtNightWeCode 5y ago
  Some eye colors are dominant. We still have a lot of different eye colors.

chiefalchemist 5y ago

> Published in Science on Thursday, the study looked at the genetic changes engineered due to mass poaching for ivory. This interpretation of evolution is a myth that needs to be busted. Nothing is being "engineered". What is happening is simply: no tusks is an advantage. That is, no tusks means less likely to be hunted / killed. As a result, the tusk genes in the gene pool are less available. The no-tusks genes more. In short, and ultra-simplified, evolution is reactive.

eevilspock 5y ago

Makes me wonder how human activity is evolving our very own genetic pool. Examples: competition vs cooperation, male vs female height, our immune system. We have long had a culture where men prefer mates that are shorter than them, and women prefer mates that are taller. This results in constant pressure on the pool resulting in men being on average taller than women. Will this change over time as we outgrow this rather primitive preference? (Sadly, even many feminist women have clung to this preference.) Not all species "prefer" that the male is bigger or stronger than the female. An obvious one is our reliance on modern medical technology, and drugs in particular. Are our bodies becoming less able to fend off disease? The most important one for me is the balance between those genes that give us our selfishness and those that give us empathy and love. What impact does an ever more individualistic culture and an economic system that defines selfishness as a virtue have on our gene pool?

cabalamat 5y ago

> Relentless ivory hunting over decades has caused elephants to evolve in a way we never imagined them to. This is only true if "we" have very little imagination.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

ChrisArchitect 5y ago

Only the fourteenth story about this in the past week on here

asow92 5y ago

Humanity is a part of nature and we are drivers of an epochal natural selection (and extinction) event. This has already happened and will continue to do so.

ygmelnikova 5y ago

Similar results with my Drosophila in grade 9.

mulmen 5y ago

Is this actually evolution or just selective breeding? By killing elephants with tusks the poachers are favoring elephants with the no-tusk gene. This isn't a lot different than killing a dog that bites sheep, which is how we bred herding dogs. Or a wolf that eats your baby, which is how we domesticated dogs. This trait already existed so it certainly wasn't "engineered due to mass poaching for ivory" as claimed.

smk_ 5y ago
Selective breeding is one form of evolution.
- vlz 5y ago
  This is the correct differentiation. One possible selection mechanism of evolution is selective breeding. Others are predators, changes in the habitat etc.
  - proto-n 5y ago
    I'd argue this is more a case of (human) predators though, rather than intentional breeding.
TehCorwiz 5y ago
Evolution IS selective breeding. The members of a species most fit for their environment are successful in procreation. The female elephants without tusks are surviving at higher rates which is resulting in more offspring with no tusks. This causes a shift in the population where a trait previously with no or little benefit becomes advantageous and the shift in genetic makeup of the whole population evolves.
- engineer_22 5y ago
  But we don't commonly run around saying Arabians and Morgans are different because of evolution. Neither do we say that chihuahua's and labradors have evolved into their present form. In my humble opinion "evolution" refers to speciation, which takes very many generations.

beebmam 5y ago

With discussions around evolution, I try to keep in mind that the main pressure for evolution is from natural selection, and natural selection works on death. Plenty of species have been "naturally selected" for total extermination. It's difficult to keep ethics out of discussions when facing the reality of life: that there is a massive amount of death and suffering, and it's a terrifying thing we're all forced into, including these elephants.

PradeetPatel 5y ago

At the risk of being downvoted to oblivion, is there such thing as ethicially sourced ivory? If not, I imagine the only reasonable thing to do would be to educate and raise awareness on the catastrophic impact poaching has on the elephant species as a whole.

sva_ 5y ago
Great plan, but I'm pretty sure that people who buy ivory don't give a damn about elephants.
notriddle 5y ago
Injection-molded plastic? I kid. I kid. Obviously, injection-molded plastic is bad for the environment, regardless of its history as an "ethical source of ivory."
rich_sasha 5y ago
I remember reading about the very thing, sold by one of the wildlife reserves, coming only from naturally deceased animals. There's also other species that have comparable bones. Supposedly, the melting permafrost is drowning the ivory market with mammoth ivory (which somehow is a cheap counterfeit, not an awesome curiosity): https://www.wired.co.uk/article/mammoth-tusk-hunters-russia-china https://www.wired.co.uk/article/mammoth-tusk-hunters-russia-...
aziaziazi 5y ago
It depends on your owns consideration of what is ethic : some animist may not consider ethic to take part off a dead corpse. Others may draw the line between wild and bred animals. You may also consider that it is ethic to kill a living being if you do it in an « honorable » way (use your own definition of honorable) , as in coridas or hunting.
q1w2 5y ago
This is a fantastic question - as this is indeed done for other African animals, like crocodiles. The biggest issue is that elephants cannot be profitably raised in captivity - they require too much food, too much space, and take too long to produce tusks. ...and if you allow them to roam in reserves, then poachers shoot them. I do wonder if it might work in another part of the world that could offer better security for large elephant reserves, without them impacting the native habitat. It has also been tried with tusks obtained by elephants that naturally died, and that program failed due to smugglers bribing officials to insert poached ivory into the auctions [0]. [0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/06/13/these-african-nations-want-to-sell-a-fortune-of-legal-ivory-bad-idea-scientists-say/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/20... I think the underlying issue is that demand is so high that there wouldn't be anywhere on Earth that could produce enough to stop cheap poaching in Africa, so it's easier to simply ban the trade entirely. Maybe there's an opportunity for lab-grown ivory? [1] [1] https://cen.acs.org/articles/96/i4/synthetic-horns-tusks-offer-hope.html https://cen.acs.org/articles/96/i4/synthetic-horns-tusks-off...

boringg 5y ago

That is both fascinating and deeply sad at the same time.

mmoskal 5y ago

Not sure about the linked article, but the paper was also mentioned in last week The Economist, and it said that the number of tusk-less elephants was already dropping (it peaked 50% and now is 33%) due to conservation efforts.

aaron695 5y ago

This is old news. It's been discussed for decades. Generally the lack of tusks was not definitely considered due to poaching directly causing evolution/selective pressure outside of the fake news media. ie. Genetic drift - https://blog.waikato.ac.nz/bioblog/2008/08/tuskless-elephants-natural-sel/ https://blog.waikato.ac.nz/bioblog/2008/08/tuskless-elephant... What would be interesting here is if genetics has proven it's due to selective pressure and strongly indicates poaching. Things like removing elephant tusks from live animals (as they do) would increase tusklessness as well. You see this with polled livestock, you have to remove all horns when a few are polled else the horned animals dominate.

BuffaloBagel 5y ago

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://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregory_C._Carr https://gorongosa.org/greg-carr/ https://gorongosa.org/greg-carr/

theaussiestew 5y ago
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.

ddlsmurf 5y ago

This is such a weird to put eugenics. Say I kill all blue eyed people, would you then say "People are evolving brown eyes due to this guy" ?

maxerickson 5y ago
It's not a consequence intended by ivory poachers.
- ddlsmurf 5y ago
  Alright, eugenics wasn't the right word. But still this isn't evolution in the same way getting a medical intervention isn't. If you want to include everything we do as part of evolution, which is a defensible position, then all murders would be natural, this is not a practical perspective for a society.
  - maxerickson 5y ago
    What implications does murder being natural carry? For instance, most responses to murder are natural in exactly the same sense that murder is natural. Things like a legal system and imprisonment are sophisticated group responses to murder, but they aren't somehow separate from our nature because of that, they are part of it.

bambax 5y ago

Elephants are not "evolving" and it's not a "response" to poaching! Poachers killed elephants with tusks, and as a consequence elephants without tusks have a reproductive advantage. This is more like dog breeding than about nature fighting back.

dissent 5y ago
Disagreed. This really is natural selection and not artificial selection. The poachers aren't selectively breeding for elephants without tusks. Quite the opposite. You are correct that it's a tautology - the elephants remaining are the ones without tusks - but that's exactly how natural selection works.
- bambax 5y ago
  > The poachers aren't selectively breeding for elephants without tusks Yes they are, that is exactly what they are doing. There is nothing natural about it. It wouldn't happen if not for the poachers.
  - bakje 5y ago
    But the poachers would rather breed for elephants with tusks, that's the whole point of their poaching after all. I feel like I don't really know enough about the specifics of natural selection or evolution to have a strong opinion on this. The poaching is definitely not natural, so it feels like this is not natural selection. On the other hand, no one is deliberately breeding for this in any way, it's purely a side effect of these circumstances, which does feel more natural. You could just view the poachers as an environmental hazard to tusked elephants, in which case this would be a perfect example of natural selection.
    - bambax 5y ago
      > You could just view the poachers as an environmental hazard to tusked elephants, in which case this would be a perfect example of natural selection. Yes okay you can say this... But if you are saying that poachers/humans are part of nature, then nothing in the world is "unnatural" anymore. I think this line of reasoning, while valid, is less precise and less interesting.

knuthsat 5y ago

If humans can modify the animals in the environment this fast, I see no reason why we just cannot assume that most of the living wild animals are already a result of humans doing the selection. I was always quite confused by the fact that most animals look quite nice but given these results I guess humans can extinguish the ugly and leave the beautiful.

ipaddr 5y ago

I wonder how long tusk vs non tusked females live in a poachfree environment.

MichaelMoser123 5y ago

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/ https://www.savetherhino.org/thorny-issues/de-horning/

luxuryballs 5y ago

Sounds like the poachers are scientists now.

gremloni 5y ago
Do they meticulously record their data? Checkmate.

Pinegulf 5y ago

Selection at work. I speculate that fish size is undergoing similar effect due to fishing-net eye-sizes.

SavantIdiot 5y ago

At least 6 threads here claiming selective breeding is really just evolution and it is a semantic issue. Would any experts please step up and clarify this?

ThinkBeat 5y ago

A lot of elephants are killed for the ivory in their tusks Some elephants are born without tusks and live much longer. Natural mating between tuskless elephants will dramatically increase. This will result in the trait being propagated rapidly.

IanSanders 5y ago
>This will result in the trait being propagated rapidly. Another comment by Stevvo mentioned > ... a trait that could negatively impact a female's chance of survival AND kills 100% of her male offspring.

Markoff 5y ago

I would like to see numbrs for elephant population, considering this study takes into consideration 30 years of heavy poaching and average life of african elephant is at least 60-70 years, couldn't this be just smaller sample group? so obviously if you kill 90% of elephants and leave only 10%, most of them tuskless, their offsprings will be much more commonly tuskless, though it doesn't mean it won't return back by itself over time

anonu 5y ago

Is this how evolution works? The article implies a cause and effect. But i always thought genetic variation was random and if that variation conferred some advantage in the world, it would dominate over many 1000s of years. Also, i imagine elephants have long gestation periods and live longer than say your average single cell organism. Meaning the "evolution cycle" if you will, is much more drawn out..

mleonhard 5y ago

Has anyone tried raising elephants using industrial livestock methods, for harvesting ivory and reducing the price to reduce poaching? I expect that selective breeding could yield elephants that produce large amounts of ivory continuously. Elephant generation time is a minimum of 11 years (2 years gestation and 9 years for females to reach sexual maturity). The project would take many years. Other animals produce ivory. Common warthog has a 2-year generation time. Hippo is 7 years. Walrus is 6 years. Narwhal is 7 years.