Hi
When I was at the dentist last week I was a little early so picked up a copy of National Geographic
I read an article about Richard Dawkins book - The Selfish Gene
He’s an evolutionary physicist and author of several books on Darwin and evolution
Anyway this article contained a snippet from the book (which I have now bought) that I found pretty mind blowing
It was all about the Short Tusked Elephants……
Poachers killing these brilliant animals for their tusks is a big problem in parts of Africa and the bigger the tusks the more valuable they are
If they are caught the penalties are very high so poachers concentrate only on the largest tusked Elephants and ignore the rest
One day some scientists discovered a tribe of Elephants all of which had unusually small tusks.
It appeared that over several generations evolution (Darwin’s survival of the fittest*) had taken over.
With all the big tuskers being killed off only the small tuskers were breeding and passing on their “small tusk genes”
Eventually the poachers left them alone and went looking elsewhere for better plunder.
Pretty cool eh?
*Thing is, Darwin never actually talked about “The survival of the fittest”, or strongest……
What he said was “ It is not the strongest of the species that survives nor the most intelligent but the one most responsive to change”.
Nowadays - and particularly right now - evolution is technological.
And the great man’s words ring truer than ever.
Bests
Dave
