Remember When Elephants Had Tusks?

Boing Boing links to an interesting story today. If an antibiotic kills 95% of a germ species, but 5% bear a gene for resistance, indiscriminate use of it will result in a surviving line of entirely resistant germs. But on a slightly larger scale, genetically tusk-free elephants are gaining ground relative to their tusked brethren, says one study, thanks to a nasty antibiotic called poaching. If elephants don't have the decency to go extinct, maybe they'll just hang around to tusklessly remind our grandchildren where billiard balls originally came from, and to invite us to ponder what the last poacher was thinking as he shot the last tusked elephant.

Comments

One has to wonder...

[ZSpade]

How that poacher is going to get that gun past zoo security...

I seriously doubt they'll go extinct, but tusked elephants may go extinct in the wild.

Re:One has to wonder...

[jericho4.0]

In the parks of Kenya, poachers go heavily armed, obviously to kill elephants, but also to defend against wardens, who shoot to kill on sight.

It is part of a trend.

[AtariAmarok]

It is part of trend. Tens of thousands of years ago, elephants had 6 tusks instead of just 2.

Interesting...

[quark101]

While the bacteria example has been around for a very long time and is commonly known, it is not very often that the same trend is extrapolated to the larger, more relavent world.

What we have to ask ourselves though, is, are we doing this to any other animals as well? Forcing evolution, as it could be called? What will be the long term effects? Tuskless elephants is one thing, but there could potentially be something very dangerous coming, besides super bacteria, of course.

Re:Interesting...

[TheSloth2001ca]

This same phenomenon has been observed in lakes where extensive sport fishing takes place. Since either by regulations or due to the angler's behaviour the larger fish seem to have the most fishing pressure applied to them. Over time the abundance of large fish decline, and remain low even after many years where not fishing is permitted on the lake. What happens is those fish with the genetic disposition to grow very large have a much lower success rate when it comes to mating, and there fore the genes that allow fish to grow large become increasingly rare.

Re:Interesting...

[pclminion]

What we have to ask ourselves though, is, are we doing this to any other animals as well? Forcing evolution, as it could be called?

I have to strongly object to your terminology. Evolution is not an entity or process which can be "forced" into anything. It is simply an observation about what happens in the world.

"Selective pressure" is an incredibly loaded term which anthropomorphizes what's really happening. In this case, what is happening with the elephants is that the ones with tusks are being killed off, and the ones without tusks are not (and it's not any more complicated than that). There is nothing putting "pressure" on the elephants to lose their tusks. The mutations are random and happen without respect to environmental changes. It is the environment which makes some of these mutations more or less favorable but it is not the cause of those mutations.

Suppose you wanted to "force" humans to evolve gills, like fish. Suppose that you did this by rounding up everybody who did not have gills, and drowning them. Do you think this procedure has any chance in hell of causing humans to start growing gills? The reason why not, is that the sort of mutation that could cause that is extremely complex and almost infinitely unlikely. But in the case of the elephants, the tuskless phenotype was present even before the advent of modern hunting.

Evolution has no will, no path, no agenda, no nothing. It can't be forced, pressured, coerced, etc.

Re:Interesting...

[TheSloth2001ca]

Evolution has no will, no path, no agenda, no nothing. It can't be forced, pressured, coerced, etc.

However by modifying the selective pressures we can have large influences on the directions of evolution. While humans did not create the tuskless phenotype we are contributing to its increase in abundance

I welcome it.

[AtariAmarok]

I welcome it, just like seedless watermelons. The dang tusks keep getting caught in my cheek, and you never can find a good place to spit them out without seeming like a total slob.

Tuskless elephant jokes

[AtariAmarok]

Q: How do you shoot a blue tuskless elephant?
A: With a blue tuskless elephant gun, of course.

Q: How do you shoot a yellow tuskless elephant?
A: Have you ever seen a yellow tuskless elephant?

Q: What did Tarzan say when he saw the tuskless elephants coming over the hill?
A: "Here come the tuskless elephants over the hill!"

Q: How do you tell if there have been tuskless elephants in your refrigerator?
A: Footprints in the peanut butter, and no rips in the saran wrap.

Q: What did Charles de Gaulle say when he saw three tuskless elephants in sunglasses coming down the path?
A: Ribbit.

Q: What did Jane say when she saw the tuskless elephants over the hill?
A: "Here come a bunch of grapes over the hill". She was colorblind.

Q: How do you get down off an tuskless elephant?
A: You don't. You get down off a duck.

This one is bound to cause controversy

[FidelCatsro]

I have advocated this before , but one sure way to stiff up the elephant populations and to eliminate illegal poaching is to create elephant farms.
In doing so we create a reputable ivory trade , a great source of work for the local communities ,a new source of food and a strong elephant population.
I am not talking about factory farming as i find that disgusting , It should be rather free range .
It could also double as a safari trip , ivory could be harvested via profitable hunts (then sold on , including selling of the meat) .

Re:This one is bound to cause controversy

[molo]

Why not just harvest the ivory when the elephant develops maturely sized tusks, instead of killing the animal?

-molo

Realities Priorities

[kenp2002]

The fact that actions like this occur is more then likely based on immediate circumstances rather then a long drawn out through process. If I am staving and I find some apples the fact that I could take the apples and plant the seeds and have even more apples is more then likely going to be eclipsed by my immediate need to eat and the real necessity to hunt and gather NOW rather then farm LATER. Concerning the last tree, they may have cut it down for the immediate need of getting a fishing boat in order to eat NOW rather then the fact that there are no more trees to build boats LATER. In modern society, added with a touch of greed and self absorbtion, you get people who satisfy their needs (real or perceived) NOW rather then their kids needs LATER. Look at how many retire in their old age, no planning for LATER.

Nothing suprising here... move along...

Re:Realities Priorities

[haggar]

My simple objection is that poachers are not starving. They are members of organized crime gangs, often so powerful to be able to challenge the state institutions themselves. Poaching is a sistematic process, and it's very "well" tought out: the reason why poachers don't plan for the future (i.e. why they poach all they can and to hell sustainability) is because poaching gangs are compiting against each other. It's a destructive logic, and it makes me revolt, but it's logic.

Do you know what "survival" means?

[Scrameustache]

On CNN the other day, I heard this referred to as "survival of the fittest," which was one of the dumbest things I had heard in weeks. The anchor implied that because tuskless elephants used to be 5% of the elephant population and now they're 8%, this means that more elephants are being born with the tuskless gene, which could be completely false. If I have 100 elephants, 5 of them tuskless, and I kill 37 of the tusked elephants, 8% of the elephants are now tuskless - Darwin it ain't.

THIS was one of the dummest thing I've read in weeks.

If you kill elephants, and some survive because of a genetic trait: It's survival of the fittest.
In this case, the fittest being the ones less likely to be shot due to a genetic predisposition to refrain from growing big shiny tusk with high resale value.