Brenen Ketchum

Mr. Checketts

Biology 1010

16 May 2017

Humans are Forcing Other Species to Evolve

Evolution is the change in the genetics of an organism and their offspring over time.

Some bounding concepts include natural selection and survival of the fittest. Creatures that are

best suited to their environment will be successful and have offspring. The fittest, most capable

of adapting to changes in the environment will stay around and if an environment changes it can

causes certain species to die. The success of humans has lead to massive environmental changes.

The changes humans have caused is forcing other species to evolve or to go extinct.

According to Jess Zimmerman, Tuskless elephants: In Zambia, the proportion of

tuskless female elephants went from 10 percent to 40 percent in 20 years. In Sri Lanka, fewer

than 5 percent of male elephants now have tusks. This is all due to poaching elephants

without tusks live longer and reproduce more, because poachers will kill the whole animal just to

get a few cubic inches of ivory (grist 1). Elephants even became protected because of such

aggressive hunting and poaching acts. The introduction of a predator (human) onto these

elephants has caused the population to decrease. Not only decrease but such rapid changes in

social desires for ivory has caused near extinction. Those elephants without tusks are not affected

by this change and so their populations continue to rise. Gene pool refers to the proportion of

genotypes in a population. Humans have changed the gene pool of elephants causing future
generations to have no tusks.

Wooly mammoths had already suffered such a fate. Dailymail.uk conducted

archaeological studies showing that the remaining population of woolly mammoths went extinct

mainly because of humans. In colder regions, humans hunted mammoths for their thick coats.

The extinction removed fur from the genome of elephants and now elephants look much

different than they use to.

 Humans have also almost caused the extinction of the grey wolf. Farmers would have

issues with wolves eating farm animals such as chickens. The justified killing of these wolves led

to a wolf population that was no longer inferior to farms (scientific american).

Other than human actions, a consequence of our lifestyles is changing the environment.

One such example is Lake Urmia. Located in Iran, the damming of rivers flowing in has caused

the lake to shrink to 10% its original size (bbc). The changing environment has left fish adapted

to salt water to tolerate the increasing salinity of the water.

Humans are forcing evolution by killing off certain species. Should humans decide what

species live and which ones die? Those that would say no, say that other animals change the

environment, cause competition, and influence the populations of other animals. Except, just like

how wolves could over eat their food source, humans are known for overfishing, causing

extinctions, and messing with the food chain in ways that we do not always predict. Though

humans change the environment we could and should preserve the species of earth. As far as we

know, life is unique to earth and is nowhere else in the universe, therefore it is important to keep

earth as biologically diverse as possible.

 References

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-humans-shape-evolution-other-species/

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-35462335

http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/programs/biodiversity/elements_of_biodiversity/extinction_crisi
s/

http://grist.org/article/2011-05-05-how-humans-are-forcing-other-species-to-evolve/

http://wallace.genetics.uga.edu/groups/evol3000/wiki/ad1ce/What_Causes_Evolution.html

http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~ucbhdjm/courses/b242/OneGene/OneGenePP.pdf