It’s Survival of the Weak and Scrawny

[n2doc]

Researchers see 'evolution in reverse' as hunters kill off prized animals with the biggest antlers and pelts.

By Lily Huang | NEWSWEEK
Published Jan 3, 2009

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.

When hunting is severe enough to outstrip other threats to survival, the unsought, middling individuals make out better than the alpha animals, and the species changes. "Survival of the fittest" is still the rule, but the "fit" begin to look unlike what you might expect. And looks aren't the only things changing: behavior adapts too, from how hunted animals act to how they reproduce. There's nothing wrong with a species getting molded over time by new kinds of risk. But some experts believe problems arise when these changes make no evolutionary sense.


Ram Mountain in Alberta, Canada, is home to a population of bighorn sheep, whose most vulnerable individuals are males with thick, curving horns that give them a regal, Princess Leia look. In the course of 30 years of study, biologist Marco Festa-Bianchet of the University of Sherbrooke in Quebec found a roughly 25 percent decline in the size of these horns, and both male and female sheep getting smaller. There's no mystery on Ram Mountain: male sheep with big horns tend to be larger and produce larger offspring. During the fall rut, or breeding season, these alpha rams mate more than any other males, by winning fights or thwarting other males' access to their ewes. Their success, however, is contingent upon their surviving the two-month hunting season just before the rut, and in a strange way, they're competing against their horns. Around the age of 4, their horn size makes them legal game—several years before their reproductive peak. That means smaller-horned males get far more opportunity to mate.

more:

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

[Deja Q]

1. Most geeks see into things. Darwin, if he hadn't been observing, would have otherwise been...

a winner of the Darwin award.

It's not easy to find structure in a world full of chaos. Though greed is apparently universal, and greed makes scrawny and weak out of many too.

Depends on your perception and point of view.

As for "survival of the fittest", define "Fit" and would those who claim to be both "fit" and "Christian" be found worthy by Christ? (Sorry for the religious example, but there is a point to that. Jesus was about community. Helping more than just the "fit". And some of what so-called "fit" people do would be against not just Jesus, but the 'Ten Commandments' too.)

[Richard D]

2. And the meek shall inherit . . .

Probably not what Matthew meant though.

[unpossibles]

3. no, it's still survival of the fittest

"fit" does not mean the biggest, best, or whatever, it just means whichever trait best fits into whichever environmental condition. In this and many cases, being "the fittest" means the smaller members are more successful.

[Realityhack]

8. +1 n/t

[phantom power]

14. Exactly, we are deforming the fitness landscape.

The functional definition of "fitness" changes continuously in a system of interesting complexity. In fact, the continuing novelty of the biosphere is due in large part to the fact that every time a species changes, it changes the fitness landscape for other species, and itself.

[Realityhack]

15. Yep. Look at all the way plant life changed atmospheric conditions n/t

[RaleighNCDUer]

4. And we are doing the same thing to ourselves -

the military (at least at one time) has strict standards for intelligence and physical fitness. So what happens to a population during wartime, when the most fit and most intelligent are put at risk, while the least fit and least intelligent are protected from risk?

[n2doc]

6. You get Bushie!

After all, who doubts that W would have been at high risk had he been an "ordinary" infantryman in Vietnam instead of living the "high" life in Alabama?

[TZ]

7. Not necessarily.

Look at the Vietnam draft..a lot of bright people went to Grad school to avoid the war. Not really a good example.

[Realityhack]

9. Yeah I agree.

Honestly I don't think we are loosing our intellectual elite to IED's in Iraq. The physical fitness argument might be a little stronger.

[RaleighNCDUer]

10. That is true, but nevertheless, of the 50,000 we lost every one was

at or above average in the general population.

I was raised as a military brat, and never knew what it was like to live among the average until I came back to the states at 18. In the world I was raised in there were no old, infirm, or crazy people. Everyone was average, or better than average. It was a self-selecting group which held the average to be the bottom line.

Now, with the all volunteer force, standards have been reduced to make the quotas. People are joining who would have been flat out rejected 30 years ago. It's a different military. If the general populace is a bell curve, then the military of that day started the graph halfway through the bell. Therefore, EVERY casualty was from the upper half of the population - not only the 50,000 killed but the 250,000 wounded - while their below-average counterparts were protected by being rejected by the draft board for physical or mental (either intelligence or mental health) defects.

[Realityhack]

11. That isn't quite true.

Yes the very low end of the bell curve was rejected for military service and that point may have slid downward some. But it was never at the half way mark. That would exclude over half the population (physical and mental exclusions of various types will never line up exactly).
So no not all of the killed and wounded where above average. Plenty where below the 50th percentile.

So yes it was a skewed sample but you are overstating your case.

[RaleighNCDUer]

12. For all practical purposes, there is no difference between an IQ of

95 and an IQ of 105. That 10 point spread is the 'average' range. And while the upper range was never rejected - say 130 - you would NEVER find anyone in the service with a 70 IQ. With 40% of the population in that 10pt spread of 'average', and 30% higher and 30% lower, it's safe to say that 99% of the casualties were in the top 70% of average or better, with 1% in the lower 30%.

Believe me, Forrest Gump never served in the Army.

[Realityhack]

13. As I said...

it IS a biased sample.

However you are also forgetting that high IQ's tend to be under-represented in the military and especially among casualties.

Furthermore you need to do some reading on IQ and the 'normal' range. just presuming it is between 95 and 105 is pretty stupid. Normal would typically include the first standard deviation in either direction. a range of 85-115 or 84-116 depending upon the test.
That range would cover approximately 68% of the population. Eliminating everyone below 1 standard deviation (which is probably more than what the military actually cut) would eliminate only 16% or so of the population.
Your 10 point range would cover approximately 26% of the population not 40%.

"you would NEVER find anyone in the service with a 70 IQ." sure that less than 3% of the population is right out.

Sorry if I am coming across badly but this kind of overly simplistic, numbers from thin air 'evolutionary' analysis is dangerous IMO because it has been used to support so many horrible positions. Even if we where to isolate ourselves to IQ the problem of determining the overall effect of the war casualties would not be anything close to strait forward.

[TygrBright]

5. "Tall Poppy" syndrome enters the evolutionary cycle. Interesting. n/t