amazing science/nature images

[ukimalefu]

The International Space Station as of Oct. 4, 2018

[maurvir]

[ukimalefu]

[DukeofNuke]

my cats would say, "Hi!, The dish is over here."

[TOS]

astronomers discover "ghost galaxy" near our own milky way

it's very hard to see because it's obscured by the bright disc of the milky way, plus it's apparently very dim, but it's about as far away as the large megellanic cloud

[ukimalefu]

[TOS]

very interesting indeed

most people don't know how many ships have been lost in the great lakes -- many thousands of vessels, far more than the bermuda triangle

they're often incredibly well-preserved by the cold temps and low oxygen levels

they've found sailing ships with the rigging intact, amazing stuff

[TOS]

juno probe spots cloud formation nicknamed "the dolphin"

[obvs]

Oh, cool.

[TOS]

the juno footage is so damn spectacular

[ukimalefu]

Honey badgers don't care

[ukimalefu]

African elephants are evolving to not grow tusks because of poachers

Hunting has given elephants that didn't grow tusks a biological advantage in Gorongosa, as Poole explained, because poachers focus on elephants with tusks and spare those without.

[ukimalefu]

You'll want to watch this full screen on a big screen if you can

ISS Timelapse - Progress MS 10 launch (16 novembre 2018)


The arrow you'll see at the beginning is a bit early. Just wait for it, you'll see "it".

It looks so unreal.

[TOS]

African elephants are evolving to not grow tusks because of poachers

Hunting has given elephants that didn't grow tusks a biological advantage in Gorongosa, as Poole explained, because poachers focus on elephants with tusks and spare those without.

blatherskite, lysenkoism was refuted decades ago

[ukimalefu]

African elephants are evolving to not grow tusks because of poachers

Hunting has given elephants that didn't grow tusks a biological advantage in Gorongosa, as Poole explained, because poachers focus on elephants with tusks and spare those without.

blatherskite, lysenkoism was refuted decades ago

had to google it, still not sure if you're joking or not

just forget about the evolution thing

fiddlesticks those elephant killers

[maurvir]

African elephants are evolving to not grow tusks because of poachers

Hunting has given elephants that didn't grow tusks a biological advantage in Gorongosa, as Poole explained, because poachers focus on elephants with tusks and spare those without.

blatherskite, lysenkoism was refuted decades ago

had to google it, still not sure if you're joking or not

just forget about the evolution thing

fiddlesticks those elephant killers

Preferably with the largest tusk that they are caught with.

[Metacell]

African elephants are evolving to not grow tusks because of poachers

Hunting has given elephants that didn't grow tusks a biological advantage in Gorongosa, as Poole explained, because poachers focus on elephants with tusks and spare those without.

blatherskite, lysenkoism was refuted decades ago

?? Elephants without tusks are more likely to live long enough to breed.

[obvs]

African elephants are evolving to not grow tusks because of poachers

Hunting has given elephants that didn't grow tusks a biological advantage in Gorongosa, as Poole explained, because poachers focus on elephants with tusks and spare those without.

blatherskite, lysenkoism was refuted decades ago

Elephant tusks are teeth.

As someone born congenitally lacking many and whose mother was born congenitally lacking the same ones, I wouldn't discount the idea that an elephant could be born without the capacity to develop tusks, and that that characteristic could then be passed down.

It's not to say that the characteristic was intentionally created for that purpose, but that an elephant who didn't naturally have the tusks just might not be hunted and might be able to pass on the trait, and the same might be true for its offspring and their offspring.

[user]

Have they also started to not fight over the females? Or to defend themselves?

[TOS]

African elephants are evolving to not grow tusks because of poachers

Hunting has given elephants that didn't grow tusks a biological advantage in Gorongosa, as Poole explained, because poachers focus on elephants with tusks and spare those without.

blatherskite, lysenkoism was refuted decades ago

?? Elephants without tusks are more likely to live long enough to breed.

1. does the dna of elephants understand that tusks are the reason why they're being shot?
2. evolution is a process that takes countless generations for even the slightest change to become hereditary

[macnuke]

African elephants are evolving to not grow tusks because of poachers

Hunting has given elephants that didn't grow tusks a biological advantage in Gorongosa, as Poole explained, because poachers focus on elephants with tusks and spare those without.

blatherskite, lysenkoism was refuted decades ago

?? Elephants without tusks are more likely to live long enough to breed.

1. does the dna of elephants understand that tusks are the reason why they're being shot?
2. evolution is a process that takes countless generations for even the slightest change to become hereditary

humans have circumvented Darwin with warning labels... elephants are smart yes?

[ukimalefu]

African elephants are evolving to not grow tusks because of poachers

Hunting has given elephants that didn't grow tusks a biological advantage in Gorongosa, as Poole explained, because poachers focus on elephants with tusks and spare those without.

blatherskite, lysenkoism was refuted decades ago

?? Elephants without tusks are more likely to live long enough to breed.

1. does the dna of elephants understand that tusks are the reason why they're being shot?
2. evolution is a process that takes countless generations for even the slightest change to become hereditary

I don't have the links, but human influenced evolution has been observed. Maybe the article makes it seem more dramatic than it actually is. Or maybe "evolution" isn't the right term for it? For example: big fruit, you only plant the seeds from the bigger ones, you end up with bigger fruits. Fluffy cats and dogs, you breed the ones with more, longer hair.

And my far out theory: elephants are smarter than we think and have learned to hide and/or avoid hunters/humans. The ones with no tusk think "meh, they never come for us".

I googled this

https://www.thoughtco.com/how-evolution ... ved-249896

[Ribtor]

It seems to me that selecting for tusk size is artificial selection.

[Metacell]

African elephants are evolving to not grow tusks because of poachers

Hunting has given elephants that didn't grow tusks a biological advantage in Gorongosa, as Poole explained, because poachers focus on elephants with tusks and spare those without.

blatherskite, lysenkoism was refuted decades ago

?? Elephants without tusks are more likely to live long enough to breed.

1. does the dna of elephants understand that tusks are the reason why they're being shot?
2. evolution is a process that takes countless generations for even the slightest change to become hereditary

1. The fact that a parent has a trait makes it more likely for the child to have the trait. The reason the parent has the trait is irrelevant to the child.
2. If by countless, you mean 2, then yes. Countless. Darwin first observed evolution in finches over the course of 2 countless generations adapting to changing environmental conditions. How long does it take to make a new strain of plant or breed of dog? 2 generations (the old fashioned way...with engineering it can be done in 1).

[DukeofNuke]

Elephants with big tusks get shot, deleting them from the gene pool.
Elephants with small or no tusks don't, thus increasing their percentage in the gene pool, and allowing that trait to be passed on.
Natural selection at work.

[ukimalefu]

Port Campbell National Park, Vic, Aus

[obvs]

African elephants are evolving to not grow tusks because of poachers

Hunting has given elephants that didn't grow tusks a biological advantage in Gorongosa, as Poole explained, because poachers focus on elephants with tusks and spare those without.

blatherskite, lysenkoism was refuted decades ago

?? Elephants without tusks are more likely to live long enough to breed.

1. does the dna of elephants understand that tusks are the reason why they're being shot?
2. evolution is a process that takes countless generations for even the slightest change to become hereditary

Well then thank God that elephants have only been getting hunted during this generation.

[TOS]

if you have a population of elephants and you only kill the ones with tusks, have you changed their dna?

[obvs]

If you kill off a huge percentage of the ones without a mutation, the mutation becomes more and more dominant within the population.

My family has a similar mutation to the elephants, and it seems to be dominant, as evidenced by my mom, my sister, me, and my sister's kids. If a significant percentage of the population who didn't have the mutation was killed each year(especially in a very small population), the mutation would become more and more common relative to the population as a whole.

[TOS]

i'm afraid i don't care enough about this to spend a few pages arguing about it, so i'll just close with this:

Evolutionary change is based on changes in the genetic makeup of populations over time. Populations, not individual organisms, evolve. Changes in an individual over the course of its lifetime may be developmental (e.g., a male bird growing more colorful plumage as it reaches sexual maturity) or may be caused by how the environment affects an organism (e.g., a bird losing feathers because it is infected with many parasites); however, these shifts are not caused by changes in its genes. While it would be handy if there were a way for environmental changes to cause adaptive changes in our genes — who wouldn't want a gene for malaria resistance to come along with a vacation to Mozambique? — evolution just doesn't work that way. New gene variants (i.e., alleles) are produced by random mutation, and over the course of many generations, natural selection may favor advantageous variants, causing them to become more common in the population.

[obvs]

You're arguing as if I don't know that a mutation that happened somewhere in my family history caused an obviously-inheritable, obviously dominant expression of the absence of certain teeth.

It is a mutation.

No one is arguing that in the elephants the animals somehow adapted to their environment by choosing to be born without tusks.

What I am pointing out is that it makes perfect sense that if in a random elephant a mutation caused the absence of tusks(which are teeth), that it makes perfect sense that that could be passed down and inheritable, and that poachers wouldn't have the reason to kill those animals, because those animals wouldn't have what the poachers were looking for. As large percentages of the other elephants were killed off, the elephants which obviously weren't targets wouldn't be removed from the gene pool as frequently, and so consequentially they'd be more successful breeding and producing other elephants who had the mutation that prevented them from having tusks, so elephants without tusks would make up higher and higher percentages of the population.

Chance mutations are exactly what I am pointing out, and I just happen to be a walking, talking example of this exact same kind of inherited mutation.

Your post doesn't aid your argument. It doesn't address what I'm saying.

I think you were thinking that someone was saying that elephants intentionally mutated to not have tusks, and that's not possible. But missing teeth in animals is fairly common and definitely inheritable.

In fact, the very last sentence in your quote is exactly what I said:

New gene variants (i.e., alleles) are produced by random mutation, and over the course of many generations, natural selection may favor advantageous variants, causing them to become more common in the population.

[Metacell]

When you mass kill-off a large percentage of a population based on genetic traits, you have effectively altered the genes of the population as a whole. Quit being obtuse, you pointy-eared hobgoblin!

[ukimalefu]

longest continuous timelapse from space

The International Space Station has been up there for 20 years

[ukimalefu]

NASA Live: Watch InSight Mars Landing Online

NASA's InSight lander is scheduled to touch down on Mars at approximately 3 p.m. EST, Monday, Nov. 26.

What will it do explained here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3FB2SuKFfI

[obvs]

That sounds like something that could really be amazing.

[Séamas]

if you have a population of elephants and you only kill the ones with tusks, have you changed their dna?

???
You just let the ones with the "no tusk" mutation breed and pass on their DNA.

[TOS]

it's a plane with no moving parts, powered by an ion drive

[juice]

An ion engine, like the Millennium Falcon!

[ukimalefu]

First InSight images



more here:

https://mars.nasa.gov/insight/multimedia/raw-images/

[Ribtor]

if you have a population of elephants and you only kill the ones with tusks, have you changed their dna?

???
You just let the ones with the "no tusk" mutation breed and pass on their DNA.

Yes.
There are two existing traits and one is being encouraged, unwittingly, to breed true. It's a case of artificial selection. No different from animal breeding. Father Gregor Mendel figured this out long before anyone knew what a gene actually was, let alone DNA.