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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. So

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.

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> 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.