Posted on 05/08/2006 1:17:07 PM PDT by mlc9852
Human interaction with animals could be causing evolution to go into reverse, says a report by the Royal Society, Britain's science academy.
A study of finches on the Galapagos Islands in the Pacific finches are the same birds that were said to have inspired Charles Darwin's groundbreaking work on evolution - has shown that some could be losing their distinctive beaks in response to living near humans.
Finches on the islands have developed different sizes of beak - but when people live in close proximity to the birds, their beaks revert to an intermediate size, the report says.
Andrew Hendry, a professor at McGill University in Montreal who led the study, told the Independent newspaper that the evolutionary split within the species was being reversed.
(Excerpt) Read more at english.aljazeera.net ...
Just like the moths in europe that were in my old textbooks. The moths got darker as the pollution/soot got on the trees and made the trees darker. And now that the pollution problems (from the 50's and 60's), the trees are lighter and the moths are getting lighter.
Actually the moths themselves have always been the same color. Its just the NUMBER of moths of "each" color that had changed. Just like these birds.
We are DEVO. D-E-V-O.
(But seriously, this just shows variation about the genetic mean, which is all that's ever been observed.)
The only answer is for human beings to exterminate themselves so that large-beaked finches may survive and flourish.
Ahh, micro-evolution at it's best.
I've always thought of the left wing fringe as devolved; the RAT party seems to be devolving - its the only rational explanation for the elevation of Nancy Pelosi....
people have been breeding animals for all of known history, this is news?
ROTFLMAO
Le plus ca change . . .
As opposed to writing longhand?
Sigh.
har har hardy har har...
http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=143&art_id=qw1146727088990I531
Same article, different title. Using Al jazeera as a source bothered me, too. So, I googled it.
Bush's fault.
I see Nancy as more of a deletorious mutation. In nature 99% of all mutations are fatal. We weren't that lucky in her case :)
Al-jazeera has a lot of news about all sorts of things. Of course, it's always better to have more than one source.
PFFFT!..........
That's called a change in the allele frequency. In other words, evolution.
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