Elephants without tusks are a response to the selective pressure of poaching

[adamnemecek]

I'm hoping that at some point in the future, ML + drones will make poaching a thing of the past. Unfortunately, some African countries, such as Zimbabwe and South Africa, have restrictions on drone ownership.

Also if you want to help, you should consider donating to the International Anti-Poaching Foundation[0][1] which fights these poachers. The founder, Damien Mander[2], is an Australian ex spec-ops sniper who is using his military experience to train the park rangers since they, unlike the poachers, tend to be poorly equipped and trained as well as understaffed. There is also the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust[3][4] which takes care of elephant and rhino orphans (most of them are orphans due to poaching). For $50 a year, you can become a sponsor of a particular orphan and they'll send you photos and updates about how your sponsored animal is doing. You can for example sponsor this little fella [5][6]. It's a great gift.

[0] http://www.iapf.org/

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Anti-Poaching_Fo...

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damien_Mander

[3] http://www.sheldrickwildlifetrust.org

[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Sheldrick_Wildlife_Trust

[5] http://www.sheldrickwildlifetrust.org/asp/orphan_profile.asp...

[6] http://instagram.com/p/sigT3IAUKb

[Flabenmaben]

There's a group at USC that has been working for a few years on using AI to combat poaching, with some interesting results.

http://teamcore.usc.edu/people/Paws/index.html

[DavidWanjiru]

I'm not sure how restrictions on drone ownership would be a hindrance if drones become a useful tool in preventing poaching. After all, guns are used in fighting poaching yet gun ownership is restricted in (I presume) most countries.

[eknkc]

It would be much better to soak some ivory in cyanide or something stronger and get it into market.

[_Adam]

I find it sad to think that one day we will refer to the "Tusked Elephant" the same we way we now refer to the "Sabre-Toothed Tiger". Evolution may have found a way to survive humanity in this case, but it's reason for needing to do so is absolutely stupid.

[vblord]

Is this considered evolution? Maybe more like natural selection?

[ChristianGeek]

This is the saddest example of "natural" selection I've heard of.

[projektir]

Then I would say you haven't heard much. Natural selection is a horrific process whether or not humans are involved in it. By definition it implies the death and suffering of countless creatures so that a few are selected.

This is nothing. We're concerned about it because we like elephants, but as far as nature is concerned, there's nothing wrong with killing off ~75% of all species once in a blue moon. [1]

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_event#List_of_extin...

[goodcanadian]

I'm too lazy to look up the reference, but a similar thing has been happening with big horn sheep. Their horns are getting smaller as (legal) hunters have preferentially killed the rams with the largest horns.

EDIT: Here are a couple of links: http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/bighorn-sheep-shrinking-du... https://thegatewayonline.ca/2016/01/alberta-bighorn-sheep-ho...

[pavanred]

Why sad? Why should elephants have tusks. Elephants perhaps evolved tusks because they were useful weapons and tools in the past, but for generations of elephants now the tusks are the reason they are killed. So, they are evolving without tusks to counter the biggest threat for their survival, humans.

[darkxanthos]

I think it's the most exciting. I love seeing nature effectively defending itself.

[anonymfus]

You need to subscribe to something like https://wtfevolution.tumblr.com/ then.

[kukx]

There's an interesting comment about a similar thing happening with rattle snakes. It seems they evolve into silent snakes to better avoid human predators: http://www.abc15.com/news/region-phoenix-metro/central-phoen...

[Houshalter]

Cats are slowly becoming undomesticated because humans sterilize most of the nonstray cats.

[lazugod]

Do poachers have an incentive to kill tuskless elephants too, then, so they don't become more dominant than tusked ones?

[praxulus]

Collectively they do, but no individual poacher has much to gain from killing an individual tuskless elephant. It's like a tragedy of the commons, but one that works out well for the elephants.

[gjolund]

Yes. It is so they don't waste time tracking tuskless elephants.

[PhasmaFelis]

They have a larger incentive to kill fewer elephants overall so there continues to be an elephant population to profit from. It doesn't change anything because a poacher is interested in getting big money now, not establishing a sustainable income stream for future decades.

[inimino]

According to the article, after a civil war half the female elephants left alive were tuskless, because they weren't killing the tuskless ones.

[akssri]

AlJazeera has a nice documentary, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OsMdzrxQfA

It appears that tusks from African elephants are more valued in China than those from S/S.E Asia. Does anyone know why this is ?

[kriro]

Pretty sad that human greed can force such an adaption.

With that out of the way I wonder how good nature is generally in adapting to human caused problems. This strategy seems a bit flawed as it should lead to a sharp decline in the male population and an overpopulation of females. That could in fact lead to even more danger for the elephant population. Before the damage was spread over both genders but it is now focused on just one.

I'd love to see a list of animal mutations that resulted from human intervention. Would be very interesting to read.

[mrfusion]

Offshoot topic I've been wondering. Why aren't deer evolving to stay away from roads?

[nn3]

Complex behaviors are difficult to evolve. There is unlikely to be a "stay away from roads" allele, while a "no tusks" allele was already in the elephant population.

If they live in an area where there are lots of roads everywhere, completely avoiding them may actually be maladaptive, as not every road crossing results in a fatality and they could well be trapped in a small area without it.

If they live in an area without many roads it probably doesn't really matter.

[hyeonwho2]

Here in Seoul, the feral cats seem to have evolved a phenotype to be afraid of open spaces.The result is that they cross roads very quickly.

[peter303]

And possums too

[aab0]

How would you know if they have been? As the human population shoots up massively, car-miles have increased enormously over the past century, and rural areas become denser, the number of deer-car accidents would skyrocket even if they have successfully been evolving to reduce risk.

[SticksAndBreaks]

Imagine what selective pressure could do in the future. Any non-human beneficial species is basically a pro. Eat poisonous algea and become un-eatable and you wont be hunted. Distribute Ambrosia near your living space, and human hikers will leave you alone. This would make a nice apocalyptic trailer speach: "They had miss-treated here and thought about making ammends, but she would have non of it. Mother nature is back, with a vengence! This year, outside of theaters."

[ransom1538]

Wouldn't fighting poaching just increase the overall value of ivory? Drones, guns and enforcement will just cause x10 in price?

Seems like instead of following the "war on drugs" model we should stuff the market full of practically identical synthetic ivory? Or focus on mass elephant reproduction.

One of the comments suggests money to fight poaching - I fear again, wrong approach.

[jacquesm]

> Wouldn't fighting poaching just increase the overall value of ivory?

That implies that less ivory makes it to the market which means that more elephants make it through life without getting killed for their tusks.

Ivory isn't as easily produced as most drugs so the price of ivory is dictated by scarcity even absent any other controls.

You could make as much of most drugs as bulk chemistry or farming allows.

So the value of ivory going up as a result of being tougher on poachers would be proof that it is working.

[notgood]

You should think a little bit ahead of that, give them fake tusks filled with poison gas (anti-human only). You aren't going to win this war being the passive one.

[TeMPOraL]

If Nature would be able to think ahead, it'd have already colonized the Solar System.

[wodencafe]

Those poor elephants :(

[JBiserkov]

>While virtually no male elephants are tuskless (they need tusks to fight), about 2 percent of female elephants are naturally tuskless. Among female elephants in Gorongosa who were adults during the civil war, however, half are tuskless — the others were simply killed. But tusklessness is an inheritable trait. That means that, even though poaching levels have fallen, a third of Gorongos’s young female population is tuskless today.

I think the correct term is survivor bias.

Update re downvotes: The title literally says "Elephants without tusks are a response to the selective pressure of poaching".

The body text says "2% of female elephants are naturally tuskless" (emphasis mine).

So "Elephants without tusks" per se are natural.

"(Massive) Increase in % of tuskless offspring as a result of selective killing of tuskfull adults (given that tusklessness is an inheritable trait)" seems like a more accurate, yet obvious (almost tautologically so) observation. It seems to be true when the trait is inheritable and strongly discriminated against - the children of the survivors look more like the survivors than those who were killed because they (the killed) were different. You don't say!

[r00fus]

I think your correction is mistaken. Survivor bias is a logical error [1]. This sounds like natural selection with human activity acting as a selection factor.

"[Survivor Bias] is the logical error of concentrating on the people or things that "survived" some process and inadvertently overlooking those that did not because of their lack of visibility.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias

[foreigner]

Evolution is the ultimate survivor bias :-)

[hexane360]

http://www.nature.com/scitable/definition/evolution-78

>Microevolution reflects changes in DNA sequences and allele frequencies within a species over time.

Allele frequencies changed from ~2% to ~33%. Mutations are not necessary for the process, unless the allele is at 0% frequency to begin with.

[SapphireSun]

Naturally occurring mutations / variants are the raw material for natural selection. Nothing contradictory about that. :)

[pix64]

Naturally meaning born without.