Intense ivory poaching during the Mozambican Civil War resulted in the rapid evolution of tusklessness in female African elephants, researchers report in Science, shedding light on the selective forces human harvesting can exert on wild animal populations.
This is an interesting and relevant article and one that does indeed show the importance of human activity in influencing the survival of animals with certain characteristics. However, after reading the article, I was rather not convinced that the use of the term 'evolution' in the title was warranted. It does appear that the human mediated selection of tuskless elephants has ensured that they have a better chance of survival .
What is not addressed in the paper, and I think the term evolution could have been more appropriate in this case, is the emergence of tusklessness. Tusklessness is a trait that existed before human intervention and still remains unresolved.
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