African elephants are being born without tusks due to poaching, researchers say - Polidicks

bison is another animal that is larger than a lion which they actively hunt.

[QUOTE=Arc Nova;51435152]does it really matter, at the end of the day humans are playing a major role in this and it has been documented since 1998. [editline]27th November 2016[/editline] Have you never seen a group of lions take down a giraffe or elephant before? They will take down a much larger animal using pack hunting tactics. It happens all the time.[/QUOTE] Humans playing a role is not the only component of artificial selection and 12 seconds of google searching confirms this. Humans aren't selecting any traits artificially. They would prefer the elephants have tusks. if there was a domesticated elephant specifically made for tusk production then it would be a case of artificial selection.

[QUOTE=Aztec;51435159]It really doesn't matter. Two things come to mind. First off, bird beaks are known to adapt incredibly quickly when selective pressures are put on them. Sometimes within a few hundred generations. This isn't new stuff. Second off, there could be a non-human pressure for elephant tusks being disadvantageous. I don't know what that would be because it doesnt exist (maybe a bacteria that causes an infection at the base of the tusk and kills them, maybe a predator that somehow uses the tusks to trap them) but if there was a non-human pressure then it would occur in the exact same way.[/QUOTE] If humans weren't murdering elephants for tusks, elephants wouldn't be breeding with tuskless males. They're being forced into breeding with these mates because their offspring will die otherwise.

[QUOTE=Aztec;51435163] Humans aren't selecting any traits artificially. They would prefer the elephants have tusks.[/QUOTE] Yeah no shit, that's precisely why the elephants are choosing mates without tusks.

[QUOTE=Arc Nova;51435164]If humans weren't murdering elephants for tusks, elephants wouldn't be breeding with tuskless males. They're being forced into breeding with these mates because they're offspring will die otherwise.[/QUOTE] It doesn't have to be humans killing elephants for this to occur. It just happens to be that humans are doing it, and since humans are animals just like any other thing on earth, thinking we have a special category for how we influence animals unintentionally through killing them is pretty naive. [editline]27th November 2016[/editline] [QUOTE=Arc Nova;51435169]Yeah no shit, that's precisely why the elephants are choosing mates without tusks.[/QUOTE] I'm glad you agree with me on that.

[QUOTE=Aztec;51435172]It doesn't have to be humans killing elephants for this to occur. It just happens to be that humans are doing it, and since humans are animals just like any other thing on earth, thinking we have a special category for how we influence animals unintentionally through killing them is pretty naive.[/QUOTE] you are naive if you don't think we as a species can influence other animals. We changed the whole planet my dude, it isn't that far fetched. something tells me you have no idea what you are talking about [editline]27th November 2016[/editline] You need only look at dogs to see how much control we have over animals.

[QUOTE=Arc Nova;51435161]bison is another animal that is larger than a lion which they actively hunt.[/QUOTE] This doesn't change the fact that they obviously prefer to hunt animals that take less energy to kill. You can pick it apart more if you want but herbivore megafauna obviously exist as a way to fight off predators which was my actual point. [editline]27th November 2016[/editline] [QUOTE=Arc Nova;51435179]you are naive if you don't think we as a species can influence other animals. We changed the whole planet my dude, it isn't that far fetched. something tells me you have no idea what you are talking about [editline]27th November 2016[/editline] You need only look at dogs to see how much control we have over animals.[/QUOTE] Why would you think I don't think we influence other animals? I don't actually know what you are arguing with me about. I just don't think it should be considered artificial selection. I think humans obviously caused it and I am genuinely curious about where you think I didn't imply humans caused it. Dogs are an obvious example of artificial selection. This is not.

[QUOTE=Aztec;51435185]This doesn't change the fact that they obviously prefer to hunt animals that take less energy to kill. You can pick it apart more if you want but herbivore megafauna obviously exist as a way to fight off predators which was my actual point.[/QUOTE] They are the top predator in the location, they will literally eat anything in the area if they have to, obviously they will go for the weaker/younger animals.

[QUOTE=Arc Nova;51435190]They are the top predator in the location, they will literally eat anything in the area if they have to, obviously they will go for the weaker/younger animals.[/QUOTE] Which puts selective pressure on populations to either speed up or get bigger or get some form of defense through natural selection. What is your point.

[QUOTE=Aztec;51435185]Why would you think I don't think we influence other animals? I don't actually know what you are arguing with me about. [/QUOTE] [QUOTE=Aztec;51435185]and since humans are animals just like any other thing on earth, thinking we have a special category for how we influence animals unintentionally.. [/QUOTE] ??? Maybe I misread this because I'm tired but that's what it sounds like to me [editline]27th November 2016[/editline] [QUOTE=Aztec;51435193]Which puts selective pressure on populations to either speed up or get bigger or get some form of defense through natural selection. What is your point.[/QUOTE] Predatory animals numbers are always naturally lower than prey animals. So what is your point?

[QUOTE=Arc Nova;51435200]??? Maybe I misread this because I'm tired but that's what it sounds like to me[/QUOTE] I'm saying humans killing elephants for their tusks puts a natural pressure for tusklessness humans breeding poodles for their fluff puts an artificial pressure on fluffiness.

Bottom line is, humans have directly caused elephants to choose mates without tusks, this is like the 30th time this has been in the news. there really is no argument.

[QUOTE=Arc Nova;51435216]Bottom line is, humans have directly caused elephants to choose mates without tusks, this is like the 30th time this has been in the news. there really is no argument.[/QUOTE] I never argued this point.

[QUOTE=Aztec;51435219]I never argued this point.[/QUOTE] Ah, see I must have misread your post. My bad.

[QUOTE=The bird Man;51432712]Aren't their hoofs valuable as well?[/QUOTE] Many are also being born without feet now. They just scoot around their bellies.

[QUOTE=Aztec;51435054]It is still dependent of the random mutation of a tuskless elephant. Which happens to already be present in a lot of populations of elephants. Just because humans are involved doesn't make this artificial selection. Artificial selection would infer that humans were seeking tuskless elephants and breeding them until there were no tusked elephants which isn't the case. This change in the elephants will make them less desirable to humans rather than more desirable which is the purpose of artificially selecting traits. Humans are animals too. [editline]27th November 2016[/editline] not artificial for the reason I stated above.[/QUOTE] [media]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5ztOEFoyw4[/media] Isn't it the same as this?

[QUOTE=MrJazzy;51435837] Isn't it the same as this?[/QUOTE] It is the same thing. Surprisingly Sagan was wrong about this. There's a paper I found that discusses this. This snippet deals with the crab mentioned in that video. [quote]The second myth is that the crabs did not always look like they do now. Rather, the story goes, the resemblance to a human face, and especially to a samurai face, was created by artificial selection. Artificial selection is man's version of natural selection, where certain lineages survive not because of the forces of nature, but by man's intervention. Examples are very common; all domestic animals are the result of purposeful intervention (selective breeding) by man. According to the samurai crab story, Japanese fisherman, who have plundered these waters for thousands of years, would throw back any crab caught in their net if it resembled a human face, especially the face of the long lost Heike, keeping and eating only those crabs that did not make them feel cannibalistic. Many years of throwing back faced crabs and weeding out (eating) normal crabs resulted in the faced crabs being the major contributors to the gene pool, with man in the role of a selective force shaping subsequent populations: a very prett)' example of evolution over a relatively short time span, and one of sufficient interest to have filtered down to popular articles on natural history. In fact, the [B]well-known evolutionary biologist Julian Huxley (grandson of the more famous T H. HiLxley, who was known as Charles Darwin's "bulldog" for his adamant support of Darwin's then-controversial ideas about nauiral selection, and brother of the novelist Aidous HiLxley) wrote about diese crabs in Lile magazine in 1952, stating that "die resemblance of Dmppe to an angr}' Japanese warrior is far too specific and far too detailed to be accidental; it is a specific adaptation which can only have been brought about by means of natural selection operating over centuries of nme[/B]. It came about because those crabs with a more perfect resemblance to a warrior's face were less frequendy eaten than the others." [B]More recentiy, samurai crabs were used to -illustrate the power of artificial selection in Cari Sagan's popular 1980 book Cosmos. Both accounts make for interesting reading, and tell the story of crabs turned into samurai likenesses by human hands.[/B] [/quote] But paper article goes on to describe the entire crab exoskeleton design to be related to functionality of the crab itself and unlikely caused by human interaction at all. So it doesn't appear to be either. [quote]Interesting reading, but it isn't true. [B]The grooves and ridges on the backs of crabs have specific purposes and are not merely decorative.[/B] The grooves are external indications of supportive ridges, called apodemes, inside the crab's carapace that serve as sites for muscle attachment. Elevated areas between these grooves allow for an increase in internal space, so that the various parts of a crab's viscera — gastric, hepatic, cardiac, branchial, etc. — are reflected externally. This is not to say that these structures are unaffected by selection. They are as subject to evolutionary pressures as any other feature of a crab. [B]The point here is that these ridges and grooves occur in nearly all members of the crab family Dorippidae, whether they live near Japan or not.[/B] As pointed out by the great Japanese carcinologist Tune Sakai, there are at least 17 different species of crabs in two families in the Indo-West Pacific that are similar enough to be called Heike-^ani by local residents, and there are many related species from other far off waters that bear a likeness to a human face.[B] Many Asian countries have vernacular names to account for the similarity of such crabs to a human face[/B], such as the Chinese name Kuei Lien Hsieh (Ghost or Demon faced crab), and in several countries the crabs play a prominent role in local folklore, sometimes being considered sacred, with the face representing that of a deceased relative. In the northeast Atlantic, the crab Corystes cassivelaunus, although only distantly related to dorippids (and belonging to a separate family, the Corystidae), bears a similar arrangement of grooves and elevations of the carapace that have resulted in one of its common names, the "masked crab." [B]Additionally, fossils of dorippid crabs or closely related crab species are known from sites predating man's appearance on earth.[/B] Furthermore, and most [B]damning to the myth of reincarnated samurai warriors, the fisherman who make their living from the Sea of Japan do not eat any of these crabs. Whether they resemble a samurai, a human face, or merely a crab is a moot point; all are thrown back.[/B] ¥oT Dorippe japonica reaches a maximum size of only 31 mm (1.2 inches) across the back, not at all worth the trouble of retrieving from the nets, let alone sorting through to see which ones resemble a face and which do not. [/quote] source [URL]http://research.nhm.org/pdfs/3729/3729.pdf[/URL]

I think it's naive to celebrate this as some victory against the poachers. If ivory runs out, it'll just be elephant skin that's the key to some ancient secret of primordial medicine. Or the feet. Or the eyes.

[QUOTE=Daniel Smith;51432659]that's not how evolution works lmao[/QUOTE] That is [I]literally[/I] how evolution works If elephants without tusks have increased fitness compared to elephants WITH tusks, they're going to become the dominant phenotype.

There's been a lot of arguments in this thread were the people didn't actually disagree with each other, they just misunderstood each other because of different wording

So, let me get this straight, as a lot of people are talking in jargon I don't quite understand; The population of elephants initially is varied in tusk size, with some elephants born with little to no tusk whatsoever (this is a rare event, however). Poachers target elephants with larger tusks, and as the elephants with large tusks get poached and removed from the population, the effective average tusk size of the elephant population shrinks. The genes that determine a large tusk size eventually disappear, as all the examples carrying it are killed. The remaining elephants with smaller tusks mate and reproduce, giving birth to elephants with similar small tusk sizes. As fewer and fewer large-tusked elephants are born, poachers continue to target smaller- and smaller-tusked elephants, leading to elephants with no or very little tusk being the dominant type of elephant in the population. If this were to continue on, we would probably see a time when elephants with tusks don't exist, at least within this area, right? For the longest time, I imagined evolution to be a sort of exacting system that took variables from nature and determined an acceptable adaptation to work towards. Now I understand that it's just the natural variance of a species that [I]slowly tends towards[/I] certain traits as they become more favored in the survival of the animal. I guess that's what I should expect from my early Christian education completely fucking my understanding of everything up :v:

[QUOTE=MrWhite;51436553]So, let me get this straight, as a lot of people are talking in jargon I don't quite understand; *snip about selection* If this were to continue on, we would probably see a time when elephants with tusks don't exist, at least within this area, right? Now I understand that it's just the natural variance of a species that [I]slowly tends towards[/I] certain traits as they become more favored in the survival of the animal.[/QUOTE] This assessment is correct. Mutations are near-entirely random in nature, it just so happens that some are more favorable than others, but this need not necessarily be the case for an organism to survive. For example, the reason there are so many species with noticeably different color patterns is because the mutation of skin/fur/feather coloration tends to have little effect on the survivability of individuals of a species as long as it does not make them stand out strongly in comparison to kin (i.e. brown, tan and gray going to be the most favorable colors for most larger animals, or creatures like tigers or leopards that live in heavily wooded areas benefit from stripes or other marking patterns because these break the silhouette of the figure) or makes them less interesting to each other during sexual display. (For example, peacock males could theoretically evolve much larger tail fans, but the threshhold for the males with the largest tails heavily tides with their ability to fly, as a larger tail results in a significantly more difficult ability to generate lift, whereas ones with smaller tails have less problems with this yet are less attractive to females) As an alternative and less-looked-into example, smaller creatures reproduce faster and behave quicker because the increased predation pressure is significantly more substantial than on. say, on a great ape, and thus organisms that breed faster and younger are selected for at a much higher rate as long as this does not directly conflict with their ability to grow and be healthy enough to reach said breeding age. However, when it comes to elephants, whether that occurs before the entire population is depleted by poachers is another story.

[QUOTE=MrWhite;51436553]So, let me get this straight, as a lot of people are talking in jargon I don't quite understand; The population of elephants initially is varied in tusk size, with some elephants born with little to no tusk whatsoever (this is a rare event, however). Poachers target elephants with larger tusks, and as the elephants with large tusks get poached and removed from the population, the effective average tusk size of the elephant population shrinks. The genes that determine a large tusk size eventually disappear, as all the examples carrying it are killed. The remaining elephants with smaller tusks mate and reproduce, giving birth to elephants with similar small tusk sizes. As fewer and fewer large-tusked elephants are born, poachers continue to target smaller- and smaller-tusked elephants, leading to elephants with no or very little tusk being the dominant type of elephant in the population. If this were to continue on, we would probably see a time when elephants with tusks don't exist, at least within this area, right? For the longest time, I imagined evolution to be a sort of exacting system that took variables from nature and determined an acceptable adaptation to work towards. Now I understand that it's just the natural variance of a species that [I]slowly tends towards[/I] certain traits as they become more favored in the survival of the animal. I guess that's what I should expect from my early Christian education completely fucking my understanding of everything up :v:[/QUOTE] It's pretty comparable to how fish size in terms of anatomy has been notably getting smaller and smaller. This is because humans have been harvesting the larger fish and throwing back the smaller fish. Over time, only the smaller fish survive and the bigger ones are removed from the population. Therefore, the smaller fish pass down their genes while the bigger fish do not. This is the same case with the elephants. Just replace fish with elephant and size with tusks/no tusks.

[QUOTE=Aztec;51436072]It is the same thing. Surprisingly Sagan was wrong about this. There's a paper I found that discusses this. This snippet deals with the crab mentioned in that video. But paper article goes on to describe the entire crab exoskeleton design to be related to functionality of the crab itself and unlikely caused by human interaction at all. So it doesn't appear to be either. source [URL]http://research.nhm.org/pdfs/3729/3729.pdf[/URL][/QUOTE] Fair enough, that's some interesting reading, thanks!