Poaching making China elephants evolve tuskless

[Walt Starr]

Poaching making China elephants evolve tuskless

BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese elephants are evolving into an increasingly tuskless breed because poaching is changing the gene pool, a newspaper reported on Sunday.

Five to 10 percent of Asian elephants in China now had a gene that prevented the development of tusks, up from the usual 2 to 5 percent, the China Daily said, quoting research from Beijing Normal University.

"The larger tusks the male elephant has, the more likely it will be shot by poachers," said researcher Zhang Li, an associate professor of zoology. "Therefore, the ones without tusks survive, preserving the tuskless gene in the species."

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http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050717/sc_nm/environment_china_elephants_dc;_ylt=Aq8mGxz8qS_IRKCM2Di0PbsiANEA;_ylu=X3oDMTBidHQxYjh2BHNlYwN5bnN0b3J5

Interesting how outside pressures cause a species to evolve or perish...

[shraby]

1. Evolution doesn't exist, haven't you

heard that? :crazy:

[LynneSin]

2. Let's hope it takes over the gene pool

As beautiful as elephants are with their tusks, I'd rather see them tuskless so that they aren't threatened by poachers for their Ivory!

[bryant69]

3. There's a joke to be made here

Something about White house Reporters and the absense of certain male organs. But i'm too delicate to make such a joke.

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

[malaise]

4. Elephants are so intelligent

They know how to survive.
I read a news report some years ago where a train killed a baby elephant in India and a herd of elephants derailed another train the next day. Wish I could find the link - I think it is on my office computer.
<edit sp>

[spuddonna]

5. This is mother nature whipping the finger to intelligent design!

Tuskless Elephant:"Have a tusk, ID... Maybe you can use it to explain that elephants are just a conspiracy by zoologists, just like that whole dinosaur thing is a big fraud by archeologists..."

[Igel]

6. Intelligent design folks, and most creationists, would have

no problem with this.

It's simply the result of natural selection making one pre-existing genetic variant within a population more common. Now if there had been no tuskless elephants, and suddenly a strain of tuskless ones developed, there's be a stronger point to be made.

And intelligent design is danged difficult to disconfirm. It's well nigh unfalsifiable, which is why it's a bad hypothesis.

[Lefty48197]

7. I always thought they should tranquilize the bull elephants

then saw off their tusks, and replace them with a synthetic version. I'm sure the technology to do so exists.

[belle]

8. Whoa.

[mmonk]

9. No

God made them tuskless. I think some like that were on the Ark.

[NawlinsNed]

10. This isn't evolution at all

It's natural selection. If elephants are being killed for their tusks, and there are tuskless elephants, then the tuskless elephants are not being killed for tusks they don't have. Hence, the percentage of the population of tuskless elephants increases. The quote by Zhang Li in your article specifically references this fact.