It’s Survival of the Weak and Scrawny: 'Evolution in Reverse'

[StClone]

Even with a good grade on a paper in a Genetics class in College I was never able to find support for my theory -- until now! I submitted that Human Medicine and Hunters were pressures that were having (non-?) selective pressure on genetics.

Now this from NewsWeek:

Some of the most iconic photographs of Teddy Roosevelt, one of the first conservationists in American politics, show the president posing companionably with the prizes of his trophy hunts. An elephant felled in Africa in 1909 points its tusks skyward; a Cape buffalo, crowned with horns in the shape of a handlebar mustache, slumps in a Kenyan swamp. In North America, he stalked deer, pronghorn antelope, bighorn sheep and elk, which he called "lordly game" for their majestic antlers. What's remarkable about these photographs is not that they depict a hunter who was also naturalist John Muir's staunchest political ally. It's that just 100 years after his expeditions, many of the kind of magnificent trophies he routinely captured are becoming rare.

Elk still range across parts of North America, but every hunting season brings a greater challenge to find the sought-after bull with a towering spread of antlers. Africa and Asia still have elephants, but Roosevelt would have regarded most of them as freaks, because they don't have tusks. Researchers describe what's happening as none other than the selection process that Darwin made famous: the fittest of a species survive to reproduce and pass along their traits to succeeding generations, while the traits of the unfit gradually disappear. Selective hunting—picking out individuals with the best horns or antlers, or the largest piece of hide—works in reverse: the evolutionary loser is not the small and defenseless, but the biggest and best-equipped to win mates or fend off attackers.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/177709

[provis99]

1. hunting isn't evolutionary change

Evolutionary change is founded on the idea of genetic responses to changes in the natural environment; evolution doesn't account for deliberate attempts to modify species, which is what hunting is essentially. Humans fucking up the ecosystem yet again is responsible for this.

[StClone]

3. Evolution it is

Regardless the cause. Centuries from now Humans will have considered to have evolved. That evolution, natural or not, will have been in fact caused by human influence on humankind.

[Avalux]

2. An endless argument I have with my Dad.

He: hunting white-tailed deer is a necessity; there are no natural predators and without hunters, they would starve to death from overpopulation.

Me: but hunters don't kill the weak and sick as natural predators do, they kill the deer with the big antlers so they can mount their heads and hang them on the wall. Some day white-tailed deer won't be worth hunting, they'll all be weak and antlerless.

It's common sense, really. I will pass this article along to my Dad. :hi:

[StClone]

5. Here in Wisconsin

The Wolf is taking more deer as the Canids population holds up. Wolves have a positive effect on deers by selectively taking the weak and sickly. But to many hunters wolves should be shot on sight shot and there are 4 (known) cases of that this fall. I welcome wolves but hunters and many others see it otherwise.

[Avalux]

7. In PA - there are no wolves.

Every now and then a sighting of a cougar but there really isn't anything to control the deer population. I worry if there are cougars, they will be shot.

[laconicsax]

4. Survival of the fittest doesn't mean survival of the biggest and strongest.

It means survival of those best adapted to survive long enough to breed. If it's advantageous to be 'weak and scrawny,' then those traits will be selected for.

Nothing like scientific illiteracy in the headline.

[StClone]

8. I quibbled with that too

But in the natural state of things the White-tailed Deer would indeed be positively influenced by selective pressure towards the largest and strongest. However, desire for the biggest and most expansively-pointed Buck by hunters is not comporting with the natural state of things. In reading the article scientists in the field go indepth with the contradiction. I don't have a problem with the headline and the text and the current understanding of evolution and what is going on out there.

[Gwendolyn]

6. :"Fittest" doesn't necessarily mean biggest or strongest.

It means those creatures best adapted to their environments survive. In this case, as always, evolution marches forward, never in reverse.

[StClone]

9. That is where I had a problem

[Lethe]

10. Like the other posters said, it's just evolution

not reverse evolution. Although not perfect, a better way to think of it is evolution is the survival of the fit enough.

evolution is a really wacky thing and does not have any sort of intelligent logic behind it, nor is it a homogenous process(it's not really an "it" anyway)

selection for or against a particular trait of a species is just that, and it can be any trait.

The argument that evolution is not working for the wild game because the biggest and "fittest" are being killed is flawed. Predators choose their prey for a variety of reasons, and these predator preferred traits of the population of prey will be selected against over time.

[StClone]

13. Well said

Jokingly...This may explain why a freak of nature like Anthrax getting wealthy while displaying no appreciable skills.

[BeFree]

11. Well, Take big dogs

Great Danes, Saint Bernards, et al. If the biggest and baddest were kept alive and bred, they'd be eating people left and right. As it is, only the sweetest, kindest members of the breed were kept alive long enough to breed.

So, the breeds evolved to what we have today. It was forced selective breeding, but it was evolution that made these fine dogs what they are today. And not man-killers.

[THUNDER HANDS]

12. in other words

guys with small penises are fucking up evolution.

[dorkulon]

14. Why not?

Evolution fucked them up; it's only fair.