[sunaurus]

Maybe I'm being a bit pedantic here, but being born without tusks is not in itself an "evolutionary response". Surviving without tusks and passing on those tuskless genes at a higher than previously normal rate is the actual evolutionary response.

[danbruc]

Without knowing anything about the general or scientific use of those terms, just by looking at the words, I think it is fine the way the title is worded.

What is the actor here that responds? It is the process of evolution, in the same way you could say the climate reacts to a change in solar activity. So the process of evolution reacts to a change in the ecological system - more poachers than before - by changing the elephants to no longer having tusks. And the mechanism that achieves this change is that the elephants with the genetic variation making them tusk-less have a higher chance of passing on the genes because they are less likely to be killed by poachers.

[sph]

The issue OP has is that the article conflates cause with effect.

It's not poachers that cause elephants to evolve not to have tusks.

It's that some elephant got a rare mutation, and those mutated elephants aren't as targeted by poachers, thus are able to survive more easily.

Plenty of popsci journos write as if nature is intelligent and driven by some purpose.

[danbruc]

It's not poachers that cause elephants to evolve not to have tusks.

Cause and effect are very complex concepts, probably not even well understood ones, but I would rather avoid descending into the philosophy of cause and effect, so I will just pick a potentially naive idea of cause and effect. Assume a counterfactual world without poachers, would the elephants evolve to be tusk-less? No, so the poachers cause elephants to become tusk-less.

It's that some elephant got a rare mutation, and those mutated elephants aren't as targeted by poachers, thus are able to survive more easily.

That is the mechanism at play under the hood, but it does not mean that the abstraction of poachers causing tusk-less elephants or even more abstractly that evolution causes tusk-less elephants under those circumstances are not also valid descriptions.

Plenty of popsci journos write as if nature is intelligent and driven by some purpose.

Which - to a certain extend - is fine. Countries go to war, wars cause destruction, companies go bankrupt, rivers flow to the ocean, holidays make people happy, programs produce outputs, moving the mouse with the left button down selects text, ... none of this is really true in a certain sense. But that is fine, all our words are abstractions and we understand what they really mean, they do not have to be understood literally and the meaning can be context-dependent.

[bigDinosaur]

It's amusing how downright hard it is to avoid teleological explanations of evolution. In this case it is important to note that this mutation presumably existed before poachers so they cannot be the cause of the actual genetics of tuskless elephants - but they are the cause of why the ratio is now changing. So I'd say your counterfactual is wrong: there would be a few tuskless elephants but having no evolutionary advantage they would not become the dominant phenotype.

If a species lacks the preexisting genetic diversity here, it dies.

[phkahler]

>> In this case it is important to note that this mutation presumably existed before poachers so they cannot be the cause of the actual genetics of tuskless elephants

This sounds like an argument made by creationists to deny evolution. The genes were always there and we are just seeing a change in expression.

When people of science have silly public debates like this, science loses. Stop being pedantic!

[haswell]

Creationists will always find things to attach to their arguments. A discussion on HN will not change that.

As a community, HN tends to be a place where such discussion is encouraged and relished.

“Pedantry” here (I’m not convinced it’s pedantry) does not make “science lose”.

If anything, I appreciate the tendency to discuss the more intricate aspects of things. In a world that trends ever more towards oversimplification and binary thought, it’s encouraging to find folks willing to debate the details.

And details often matter.

[bigDinosaur]

When it comes to random mutations what other explanation would you use? I genuinely don't see how that sounds like an argument made by creationists. A creationist will simply state that genes never evolved or that they've only had six thousand years to evolve. Yes, obviously something caused these mutations but it wasn't the poachers, the original selection effect before the poachers here was that the mutation didn't cause a decrease in fitness otherwise (which it does, as it kills males before birth).

[hoseja]

How did you get change in expression out of that? It's a change in population.

If some killerbots started killing everyone above 4 feet tall, would you see the sudden prevalence and thriving of people with dwarfism to be an argument for creationism?

[danbruc]

That is the way I wanted my sentence to be understood, »evolve« in »[...] would the elephants evolve to be tusk-less?« is intended to mean nothing more than become dominant due to evolution and I do not see how that word in that context could be understood as anything else.

[bigDinosaur]

Fair enough. I don't actually think you're wrong, to be clear, I think it's just easy to mix together related but distinct concepts here and the teleological angle makes that surprisingly easy to do (but it's almost impossible to actually avoid).

[sph]

> Assume a counterfactual world without poachers, would the elephants evolve to be tusk-less?

Of course they would! I can't see how you can disprove that. In both that world and ours there are or have been tusk-less elephants, elephants with two heads, elephants that live 150 years.

Evolution is pseudo-random. The whole of nature gives context and some variants thrive better within this context. It is illogical to take life out of its natural context and think whether it would have evolved differently.

Your question should be rephrased as "would elephants without tusk thrive and outcompete regular elephants in a poacher-less world?" Maybe yes, maybe no, but my point is that evolution occurs every time a new elephant is conceived, and maybe the resulting animal lives longer.

[danbruc]

[...] would the elephants evolve to be tusk-less?

The word »evolve« in that sentence means exactly what you say, »thrive and outcompete regular elephants«, or at least that is the way I wanted it to be understood. What is your definition of that word in that context that makes the sentence mean something different?

[latexr]

> evolution occurs every time a new elephant is conceived

Mutation occurs. Evolution is when the population changes, not individuals.

In this time frame it is unlikely elephants would have evolved without tusks in a world without poachers, because in that scenario tusks are an advantage.

[johannes1234321]

> maybe the resulting animal lives longer.

Living longer is secondary to evolution. Producing more offspring, which can produce offspring itself is what matters.

If an animal becomes old and endangers the herd it is harm for selection. If it can't produce offspring anymore, but protects the youngers it can be useful for survival rate.

[deafpolygon]

Isn't that the very mechanism under which evolution operates? Survival of the 'fittest' doesn't mean strongest/fastest. Clearly, due to poaching activities, tuskless elephants are being 'selected' for survival.

[hoseja]

Survival of the fittest is only an approximation, the true state is a tautology though: survival of those who survive.

[rrgok]

Dumb question: I'm always amused by this phrase "...as if nature is intelligent and driven by some purpose..". Are you not, as human being, part of nature? How is possible from an unintelligent being emerge something intelligent? Either the seed was already there or otherwise I don't know how it would be possible. Would you consider human beings not intelligent and not driven by purpose?

[sph]

I rephrase: evolution of life as we know it (that's what I meant by nature) is not intelligent nor driven by any purpose, not even survival. It's randomly throwing shit at the wall and seeing what sticks. Maybe the resulting organism lives longer, maybe not.

We only see the result of it. The observation that evolution helps find a better local maximum is literally survivorship bias.

[robocat]

Evolution is a severely misunderstood and misused word. We say a business evolved, to mean changed. We say we evolve an idea, with the implication of intelligent action. We say someone can win the Darwin Award even if they are older and already reproduced: to properly win the Darwin Award, one would need to die before reproducing, or kill their genetic offspring as well as themselves (to properly win the Darwin Award, one would need to kill all the genetic branch of their family tree).

Biological evolution is due to reproductive selection. Evolution is primarily related to reproduction: survival only matters if it affects reproduction (after all, nothing survives in the long term).

Evolution is not really defined as random change: evolution occurs due to selection pressures that amplify the genetic population of the most successful reproducers.

Genetic mutation and recombination is somewhat random, but not purely random (certain mutations are more or less likely, and the pool of successful recombinations is very biased).

It is a frustrating topic, because in biology evolution has a very particular meaning, yet biological evolution is usually misunderstood. The misunderstanding is due to the popular incorrect metaphors and alternative meanings for the word.

https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution

Disclaimer: I am not a biologist. I’m trying to be as clear as I can, while making sweeping simplifications (e.g. ignoring kin selection etcetera!) I welcome any mistakes being corrected by lurking biologists.

[deafpolygon]

Evolution of life is different from mutation. We can have mutation anytime, but evolution of life is more or less the basis of 'natural selection' in which mutations that favor survival is selected.

[gumby]

> Plenty of popsci journos write as if nature is intelligent and driven by some purpose.

You might want to read “The intentional stance” by the famous philosopher Daniel Dennett. This is a pretty useful analytic approach for many problems (e.g. we commonly say things like “the thermostat tries to keep the temperature within three degrees of its set point”).

I agree it is distressing that many people interpret such metaphors literally.

[throwawaymaths]

If we're going to play semantics here, then yes, maybe the first elephant to be born tuskless is the cause but every subsequent tuskless elephant is an effect elephant, so, the statement is still true, if only for an overwhelming majority subset of the elephants.

[hombre_fatal]

> Plenty of popsci journos write as if nature is intelligent and driven by some purpose.

This has become the midwit anthem, as pg put it, whenever we use causal language to describe evolutionary pressure.

[Konohamaru]

If the poaching activity is acting as an amplifier for that rare mutation's frequency, then yes, the poachers are in fact causing those elephants to evolve not to have tusks.

[chiefalchemist]

It's not that it conflates per se, it's that it gets the text book defintion of evolution completely wrong. Full stop.

You're correct. This happens often, too often.

[spfzero]

I don't know if I would call this an evolutionary response. It's more like the remnant effect of the one-time bottleneck the article mentions. The proportion of females with the gene for tusks was almost wiped out, while the number of females without that gene stayed the same.

There have only been a few generations gone by since then, but you would imagine the same factors that made the gene for tusks more successful in the first place, would start to again predominate, but it will probably take many generations for it to come back to where it was. That part, the recovery, could be called an evolutionary response.

[justsomehnguy]

> change in the ecological system - more poachers than before - by changing the elephants to no longer having tusks

Change in the body - more torn hymen than before - by changing the humans to no longer having hymen.

Right?

[Chris2048]

Not sure why you think this example is better - a torn hymen isn't as fatal to humans as a poacher is to elephants.

[justsomehnguy]

Because if 'evolution reacts' (q) then it would react by removing hymen. Also because women without torn hymen don't pass genes.

Did evolution reacted by removing tusks?

PS if you start to tell me how a hymen could be untorn even in the case of a complete vaginal intercourse I would slap you over TCP/IP.

[Chris2048]

Why would it? Women without torn hymen don't pass genes because they didn't have sex, not because they possessed a hymen. As soon as they have sex, the hymen tears - so it poses no barrier to passing on genes.

[renewiltord]

I am curious about the people who upvote this comment (which is currently the top comment). Do they believe that it is adding useful information, is insightful, or is otherwise helpful to someone or themselves?

It's quite obvious that article is claiming that the process of artificial selection that involves leaving tuskless elephants alive is resulting in generations with more elephants that are tuskless. That is what the article says two paragraphs in.

But perhaps it is not that obvious to others. Will someone who found parent comment enlightening please share?

[sdwr]

This is one of those bell curve memes.

Left side: Evolution took their tusks away.

Middle: Acktually it's selection pressure acting on the population combined with random mutations that...

Right side: Evolution took their tusks away.

More charitably, pedantry is a stage of learning. Practicing until the concepts get reinforced enough that you can substitute the rule of thumb again.

It's the same pattern as the hero's journey. Start at home (the naive view), do righteous battle with the concepts, return home (to the naive view) but changed.

I was into all this stuff when I was 13, reading Dawkins and Hitchens. Blind watchmaker, selfish gene. What's interesting is that the fuel for that kind of learning is part intellectual exercise, part making sense of the world, and part superiority (other people are wrong and I'm right). And now we're doing the same thing one level up.

[renewiltord]

Indeed. I suppose those a level up on us are simply wise enough to not have these discussions. I understand. It's like playing in the sandbox with children. Those smarter than me would simply not do this. Okay. Lesson learned.

[cnity]

The upvotes are from other pedants who dislike the wording, I presume. It's entertaining, and I understand the argument, but I do wonder if such people also avoid sentences like "primates evolved opposable thumbs so that they could be more dextrous". This kind of language is clearly a proxy for an overly verbose articulation of the process of evolution over and over again. It's an approximation.

[WastingMyTime89]

> primates evolved opposable thumbs so that they could be more dextrous"

I for sure do. It’s extremely wrong. It implies the very incorrect idea that there is a purpose to evolution.

[cnity]

It's shorthand for "primates with a genetic mutation that resulted in opposable thumbs were more dextrous. Those primates proliferated due to natural selection". I guarantee that even evolutionary scientists do not talk like that over dinner and regularly reach for such shorthands.

[WastingMyTime89]

Don’t worry I know biologists do it. The field is plagued by a general lack of rigour and a strong bias towards finality.

[Aissen]

Technically, the offspring themselves having more chance to be born without tusks is the "evolutionary response".

Now with a challenge: try writing a more accurate headline, in as many characters or less.

[Rygian]

"Tusked elephants breed less than tusk-less ones due to poachers" (63 chars)

[akvadrako]

You are just describing how an evolutionary response works, not being more accurate.

[Rygian]

I would specifically argue that the word "response" is itself contextually inaccurate, in the sense that it triggers ambiguity as to whether the change in reproductive rates is _intentional_ or not. My headline removes that ambiguity.

[Rygian]

A different attempt: "Tusked elephants breeding less than before due to poachers. Tusk-less ones unaffected" (85)

[johannes1234321]

"Poachers cause evolutionary benefit for tusk-less elephants"

[piskerpan]

“Tusk-less elephants outbreed tusked ones”

But that wouldn’t be as catchy and as misleading/misunderstood as the original. Anyone reading that one will assume that elephants are purposefully being born without tusk, but it’s just a ratio consequence of tusked elephants dying early.

[Aissen]

You did not mention poachers' potential impact.

[piskerpan]

“- due to poachers”

[RugnirViking]

I get what you're saying, but after actually reading the article, I see that they are not talking about random tuskless mutations, but rather that the rate of this once-rare mutation has now risen to around half of all female elephants. Unfortunately the mutation is regularly fatal to male elephant fetuses in the womb and as a result around two-thirds of all newborns are female which is causing more issues with breeding. Interesting stuff though.

[throw827474737]

> Maybe I'm being a bit pedantic here

Not only maybe a bit.. every evolutionary response is surviving and passing on something beneficial for survival/reproduction, which includes new born with it then.. come on!

[mypalmike]

I'm not an expert, but a Google search shows that the term "evolutionary response" seems to be accepted terminology for generational trends in the evolutionary process prompted by some environmental change.

[MaxikCZ]

You are not pedantic at all, the tittle sucks.

[alex_suzuki]

Typo… or freudian slip?

[Ygg2]

You are being pendantic.

It's literally pressure from environment influencing evolution.

Or an evolutionary response.

[owaislone]

Te point OP is making is that being born without tusks is just a random chance, not a response to anything but as a result of this random chance, this elephant has a higher chance of living longer and having more babies resulting in higher chance of the "tuskless gene" being passed on to future generations. The distinction is important to understand evolution correctly. A lot of evolution deniers have a problem with the "intelligent response" aspect of it which doesn't actually exist.

[Ygg2]

> Te point OP is making is that being born without tusks is just a random chance

Yes. That's how evolution works. Your genes are randomized during life/mating.

Due to selection pressure one variation is favored over the other. That's evolution.

So in evolutionary response to poachers elephants evolve no tusks.

[nverno]

It is pedantic, but I see how 'response' here lends agency to evolution, and could be interpreted as implying an intelligent process, as mentioned above.

[akvadrako]

Evolution is an intelligence in the same way people call anything AI: it's a system which can learn and adapt.

[fastball]

If anyone thinks evolution has "agency" because the word "response" was used to describe it, their understanding of evolution is clearly very limited and I'm not sure how productively that person can participate in a conversation about such.

[Ygg2]

Same way any inanimate system can respond. Think of it more like action/reaction than anything else. I.e. there is no agency just a set of interacting rules.

[nverno]

Yea, I think the original wording is fine, although I'd think of it more like the elephant genes are a river that got dammed, so the river started flowing around. Saying the river responded to the dam would be similar.

[refurb]

You are correct.

Evolution is not a process by which beneficial genes are created, it's one where they are filtered for.

Across thousands of baby elephants there are a likely hundreds of unique genetic differences. Most are worthless, some are detrimental, and some of beneficial. Evolution is just the process by which the beneficial ones thrive.

[throw827474737]

You are overly pedantic as well :D

(Noone thinks that "getting born" involves intelligence choosing, the point you are repeating applies sometimes, but here out of context imo.)

[owaislone]

I know people who used to think evolution is by design or somehow intelligent. Maybe it was a byproduct of the education system in my part of the world and yours did a better job but I've come across a lot of people who think like that. I feel it is an important distinction to make to avoid propagating such misconceptions about science.

[ravenstine]

The use of "response" seems like a misnomer. It implies that there's either an intention or mechanistic logic with a specific capability to adapt to change. At a high level, a change to a genome may be looked at as adaptive, but does a piece of metal bar stock respond to lathing if it takes a shape rather than breaking and flying off the chuck? I'm not too sure about that. Does the computer respond when given new code? More recent developments notwithstanding, it's more that the computer has a configuration and the programmer changes that configuration through the software. No `function respondToNewCode() { ... }` required.

I predict that readers of this will find this to be even more pedantic than the point you made. My reasoning is that while this terminology may not matter that much to those in the know, there's harm done to the public when science is communicated in a way that implies more than is actually there.

[fiftycents]

You are right. Evolution was a very poor choice of wording for variation. People then thinks evolution it has to be something good, when... it's just variation.

Same different: imaginary numbers. Not less number than others. There are plenty good ideas with a poor name: zero-knowledge encryption, and so on.

[PradeetPatel]

But born without tusks may be deemed "good" for the survivability of the elephants in the said environment. No tusks = no ivory, therefore minimising the incentive for poachers to hunt them.

My understanding of evolution is the ability to adapt and adjust to the ever-changing environment over multiple generations, and if we treat ivory poaching as an environmental danger, it makes sense for tuskless elephants to pass their genes on.

[fiftycents]

Yes. It's good to evade a predator. And the process you describe is accurate. But it occurs because the first elephant without tusks happens to live a longer life and prosper and left a large number of descendants just in time when they were hunting by their tusks. It just occurs, it's not a response in the sense of the specie but in the sense of the randomizing events we call world. That's why I said OP is, in the core of his argument, right.

[fastball]

Then the wrong word is "response", not "evolution". Because this is exactly what evolution through natural selection is all about.

[fiftycents]

Response would be a better wording. Yes, you are right. <<Evolution>> maybe lead you to assume that variation/response seems to move towards something. But, yeah. You are right.

[GoblinSlayer]

Did you mean teleology? It's not a teleological response, because teleology doesn't work, but it is an evolutionary response alright.

[frozenport]

>> passing on those tuskless genes

aka being born without turks

[zelphirkalt]

Ah, Turks ... I see. clears throat and scrolls on

[Ma8ee]

Uh, no.

You haven't passed on any genes until you have fertil offspring. Being born is of course necessary, but far from sufficient.

[Broken_Hippo]

That's not true. If you have offspring, they have some of your genes. They don't have to be fertile.

For a better example, take humans: If you have a child and they grow up to be infertile, you have still passed on your genes. If they choose not to have children - even if fertile - you've still passed on your genes. Your particular mix of genes just won't live on in subsequent generations. Grandchildren aren't a requirement for you to simply pass on genes.

[bearmode]

I think we all know they're talking on an evolutionary level here, not just individuals...

[carlmr]

You shouldn't "Uh, no" people if you're just 50% correct some of the time.

[Ma8ee]

The “Uh no” was to someone who tried to correct someone who was right while being 100% wrong themselves. And in the context, I was 100% right.

[Ma8ee]

If your children are infertile, you are from an evolutionary perspective a dead end.

[tremon]

You being born is the ultimate proof of genes having been passed on. In what way is that not sufficient?

[Ma8ee]

But you haven't passed on any genes. You have only been passed genes.

That is, if the choice of language confuses people: You have only been given those genes. You haven't given any genes to anyone else who can give those genes further, which is what matters in an evolutionary perspective.

[tremon]

And your parents passing on their genes to you doesn't matter, from an evolutionary perspective? You have only "been given" those genes, as if by magic?

[Ma8ee]

Uh?

[afiori]

`More Elephants born without tusks in ‘evolutionary response’ to poachers`

`Elephants without tusks in ‘evolutionary response’ to poachers`

[firecraker]

Wouldn't natural selection be more apt?

[zozbot234]

Artificial selection. By poachers.

[jollyllama]

So the title is true in every case of the tuskless elephants except the base case.