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Maybe I'm being a bit pedantic here, but being born without tusks is not in itself an "evolutionary response". Surviving without tusks and passing on those tusk
by sunaurus 4y ago
Maybe I'm being a bit pedantic here, but being born without tusks is not in itself an "evolutionary response". Surviving without tusks and passing on those tuskless genes at a higher than previously normal rate is the actual evolutionary response.
- MaxikCZ 4y agoYou are not pedantic at all, the tittle sucks.
- alex_suzuki 4y agoTypo… or freudian slip?
- frozenport 4y ago>> passing on those tuskless genes aka being born without turks
- Ma8ee 4y agoUh, no. You haven't passed on any genes until you have fertil offspring. Being born is of course necessary, but far from sufficient.
- Broken_Hippo 4y agoThat's not true. If you have offspring, they have some of your genes. They don't have to be fertile. For a better example, take humans: If you have a child and they grow up to be infertile, you have still passed on your genes. If they choose not to have children - even if fertile - you've still passed on your genes. Your particular mix of genes just won't live on in subsequent generations. Grandchildren aren't a requirement for you to simply pass on genes.
- tremon 4y agoYou being born is the ultimate proof of genes having been passed on. In what way is that not sufficient?
- Ma8ee 4y agoBut you haven't passed on any genes. You have only been passed genes. That is, if the choice of language confuses people: You have only been given those genes. You haven't given any genes to anyone else who can give those genes further, which is what matters in an evolutionary perspective.
- zelphirkalt 4y agoAh, Turks ... I see. clears throat and scrolls on
- Ygg2 4y agoYou are being pendantic. It's literally pressure from environment influencing evolution. Or an evolutionary response.
- owaislone 4y agoTe point OP is making is that being born without tusks is just a random chance, not a response to anything but as a result of this random chance, this elephant has a higher chance of living longer and having more babies resulting in higher chance of the "tuskless gene" being passed on to future generations. The distinction is important to understand evolution correctly. A lot of evolution deniers have a problem with the "intelligent response" aspect of it which doesn't actually exist.
- Ygg2 4y ago> Te point OP is making is that being born without tusks is just a random chance Yes. That's how evolution works. Your genes are randomized during life/mating. Due to selection pressure one variation is favored over the other. That's evolution. So in evolutionary response to poachers elephants evolve no tusks.
- nverno 4y agoIt is pedantic, but I see how 'response' here lends agency to evolution, and could be interpreted as implying an intelligent process, as mentioned above.
- Ygg2 4y agoSame way any inanimate system can respond. Think of it more like action/reaction than anything else. I.e. there is no agency just a set of interacting rules.
- nverno 4y agoYea, I think the original wording is fine, although I'd think of it more like the elephant genes are a river that got dammed, so the river started flowing around. Saying the river responded to the dam would be similar.
- fiftycents 4y agoYou are right. Evolution was a very poor choice of wording for variation. People then thinks evolution it has to be something good, when... it's just variation. Same different: imaginary numbers. Not less number than others. There are plenty good ideas with a poor name: zero-knowledge encryption, and so on.
- PradeetPatel 4y agoBut born without tusks may be deemed "good" for the survivability of the elephants in the said environment. No tusks = no ivory, therefore minimising the incentive for poachers to hunt them. 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.
- fiftycents 4y agoYes. It's good to evade a predator. And the process you describe is accurate. But it occurs because the first elephant without tusks happens to live a longer life and prosper and left a large number of descendants just in time when they were hunting by their tusks. It just occurs, it's not a response in the sense of the specie but in the sense of the randomizing events we call world. That's why I said OP is, in the core of his argument, right.
- fastball 4y agoThen the wrong word is "response", not "evolution". Because this is exactly what evolution through natural selection is all about.
- fiftycents 4y agoResponse would be a better wording. Yes, you are right. <<Evolution>> maybe lead you to assume that variation/response seems to move towards something. But, yeah. You are right.
- danbruc 4y agoWithout knowing anything about the general or scientific use of those terms, just by looking at the words, I think it is fine the way the title is worded. 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.
- sph 4y agoThe issue OP has is that the article conflates cause with effect. 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.
- danbruc 4y agoIt's not poachers that cause elephants to evolve not to have tusks. Cause and effect are very complex concepts, probably not even well understood ones, but I would rather avoid descending into the philosophy of cause and effect, so I will just pick a potentially naive idea of cause and effect. Assume a counterfactual world without poachers, would the elephants evolve to be tusk-less? No, so the poachers cause elephants to become tusk-less. 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. That is the mechanism at play under the hood, but it does not mean that the abstraction of poachers causing tusk-less elephants or even more abstractly that evolution causes tusk-less elephants under those circumstances are not also valid descriptions. Plenty of popsci journos write as if nature is intelligent and driven by some purpose. Which - to a certain extend - is fine. Countries go to war, wars cause destruction, companies go bankrupt, rivers flow to the ocean, holidays make people happy, programs produce outputs, moving the mouse with the left button down selects text, ... none of this is really true in a certain sense. But that is fine, all our words are abstractions and we understand what they really mean, they do not have to be understood literally and the meaning can be context-dependent.
- firecraker 4y agoWouldn't natural selection be more apt?
- zozbot234 4y agoArtificial selection. By poachers.
- renewiltord 4y agoI am curious about the people who upvote this comment (which is currently the top comment). Do they believe that it is adding useful information, is insightful, or is otherwise helpful to someone or themselves? 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?
- cnity 4y agoThe upvotes are from other pedants who dislike the wording, I presume. It's entertaining, and I understand the argument, but I do wonder if such people also avoid sentences like "primates evolved opposable thumbs so that they could be more dextrous". This kind of language is clearly a proxy for an overly verbose articulation of the process of evolution over and over again. It's an approximation.
- WastingMyTime89 4y ago> primates evolved opposable thumbs so that they could be more dextrous" I for sure do. It’s extremely wrong. It implies the very incorrect idea that there is a purpose to evolution.
- cnity 4y agoIt's shorthand for "primates with a genetic mutation that resulted in opposable thumbs were more dextrous. Those primates proliferated due to natural selection". I guarantee that even evolutionary scientists do not talk like that over dinner and regularly reach for such shorthands.
- WastingMyTime89 4y agoDon’t worry I know biologists do it. The field is plagued by a general lack of rigour and a strong bias towards finality.
- RugnirViking 4y agoI get what you're saying, but after actually reading the article, I see that they are not talking about random tuskless mutations, but rather that the rate of this once-rare mutation has now risen to around half of all female elephants. Unfortunately the mutation is regularly fatal to male elephant fetuses in the womb and as a result around two-thirds of all newborns are female which is causing more issues with breeding. Interesting stuff though.
- Aissen 4y agoTechnically, the offspring themselves having more chance to be born without tusks is the "evolutionary response". Now with a challenge: try writing a more accurate headline, in as many characters or less.
- Rygian 4y ago"Tusked elephants breed less than tusk-less ones due to poachers" (63 chars)
- akvadrako 4y agoYou are just describing how an evolutionary response works, not being more accurate.
- Rygian 4y agoI would specifically argue that the word "response" is itself contextually inaccurate, in the sense that it triggers ambiguity as to whether the change in reproductive rates is _intentional_ or not. My headline removes that ambiguity.
- Rygian 4y agoA different attempt: "Tusked elephants breeding less than before due to poachers. Tusk-less ones unaffected" (85)
- piskerpan 4y ago“Tusk-less elephants outbreed tusked ones” 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.
- Aissen 4y agoYou did not mention poachers' potential impact.
- throw827474737 4y ago> Maybe I'm being a bit pedantic here 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!
- mypalmike 4y agoI'm not an expert, but a Google search shows that the term "evolutionary response" seems to be accepted terminology for generational trends in the evolutionary process prompted by some environmental change.
- afiori 4y ago`More Elephants born without tusks in ‘evolutionary response’ to poachers` `Elephants without tusks in ‘evolutionary response’ to poachers`
- jollyllama 4y agoSo the title is true in every case of the tuskless elephants except the base case.
- GoblinSlayer 4y agoDid you mean teleology? It's not a teleological response, because teleology doesn't work, but it is an evolutionary response alright.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- ravenstine 4y agoThe use of "response" seems like a misnomer. It implies that there's either an intention or mechanistic logic with a specific capability to adapt to change. At a high level, a change to a genome may be looked at as adaptive, but does a piece of metal bar stock respond to lathing if it takes a shape rather than breaking and flying off the chuck? I'm not too sure about that. Does the computer respond when given new code? More recent developments notwithstanding, it's more that the computer has a configuration and the programmer changes that configuration through the software. No `function respondToNewCode() { ... }` required. 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.