I've read the book and it is full of fascinating examples of how urban environment are driving evolutionary changes in various animals.
I live in Singapore (one of the places he talks about in the book) and I can see anecdotal examples of the kind of things he talks about in the book, like urban birds being less anxious around humans compared to forest birds.
For me the best example of that is Switzerland, although naturally this might happen in other places as well.
Basically sparrows are so used to humans that they don't have any problem landing on a table while people are still there, while trying to see if they get something out of us.
Some of them even adopt dog like behaviors, jumping left and right or making small noises, as if begging for some food.
I was once on the balcony of the cafe at the modern art museum in Sydney, Australia, quietly drinking some coffee. A bright red bird landed on my table and was eyeing me closely.
I was thinking, "What in the world does this bird want? I don't have any food, and why would a bird want coffee?"
I figured out the answer. He made a bold grab for the sugar packet. It was too heavy to fly off with, so he just dragged it away from me, opened it, and ate it while I continued to drink my coffee.
I'm a student at the University of Waterloo in Canada. The Canada geese have become a running joke on campus. They're so accustomed to humans that they can be found grazing with their young alongside paths traversed by thousands of students moving from class to class. They make a giant mess everywhere but there is considerable resistance to having them removed. They're the most invasive and disgusting birds I've ever seen but their young are cute so people don't want them to get hurt.
Jesus that was annoying, if you're going to have a slickly produced video about your trip to see Columbian hippos how are you not going to have video of hippos in Columbia?
The case of the American cliff swallows, described in The Fine Article, offers an excellent response to the anti-evolutionist, "We've never observed it happening" position. That's it happening over decades.
The problem is more that the evidence they would accept is pretty much impossible to happen in the real world: something like a jiraffe giving birth to an eagle.
Black-and-white worldviews are, by definition, not nuanced, but evolution, but its slow (by human standards) nature, is extremely nuanced, to the point of beeing unnoticeable.
Um, no, the problem is that they are dishonest to the core and refuse to accept valid evidence presented to them because they don't want to believe that evolution occurs. Demanding impossible evidence is just a corollary.
It is noticeable for a scientist or for anybody interested, but for a creationist a slightly different mote or bird will never be a proof of speciation: it is anyway very similar to the original species, and it will be explained away by saying that is was already there or something similar.
As mentioned, a more radical event should happen to convince these people (so radical as to be impossible).
No, a "more radical event" will not convince creationists. There is already evidence enough to convince any reasonable person - more evidence of any kind will not change anything.
> for a creationist a slightly different mote or bird will never be a proof of speciation
As I noted, for a Creationist nothing will ever be proof of speciation. But apparently telling such simple truths gets downvoted.
> As mentioned, a more radical event should happen to convince these people (so radical as to be impossible).
No, no event, not matter how radical, would convince them because they are ideologically committed to rejecting evolution, which they see as contrary to their entire belief system.
You're wrong, and that silly ad hominem is content-free. What I said about Creationists is supported by large amounts of evidence in addition to my own personal experience engaging with them.
Your comment was nothing more than ignorant, content-free bigotry and gross generalization against Christians. How many Christian scientists would laugh at your characterization of their beliefs.
What I find even stranger is pro-science progressives essentially denying evolution to support their blank slate social policies. We can see that environment can have significant effects on animals in just a few decades, why would humans be immune? Progressives have ironically taken on a near religious ideology that humans are somehow different from other animals and immune to natural selection.
People throwing up emotional drivel while doing nothing to refute a point is one the least appealing aspects of hacker news
Please explain to me how humans are immune to natural selection and then go claim your nobel prize for revolutionizing human understanding of genetics.
Humans generally have given up on pure natural selection. Otherwise we would have abolished all laws and law enforcement and let the stronger win. You may be surprised by who will thrive in such a world.
Do we have any examples of beneficial mutations happening, as opposed to natural selection of existing genes? That's one of the biggest sticking points creationists have.
Evolution is change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. It may or may not be due to mutation. Why would someone discredit evolution for creationism just because they can’t see a tiny aspect of evolution.
Right, I'm just saying, back when I was a creationist myself, a large part of the argument was that it's well-nigh impossible for mutations to be beneficial. And it appears this is not direct evidence of that still.
I guess you haven't actually read the article, since you would have found your answer in paragraphs fourteen to seventeen:
> The shape of a bird’s wing is not something that evolution can mess with with impunity. It is very closely wedded to a bird’s way of life. Long pointed wings are better for fast flying in a straight line, while short rounded wings are good for making rapid turns or for quickly taking off.
> The conclusion was inescapable: only cliff swallows with wings short enough to take off vertically from the tarmac to escape an oncoming car had managed to get away and spread their short-wing genes in the gene pool. The tardier long-winged ones ended up as ex-swallows on the hard shoulder, their long-wing genes excluded from the pool. And, as the surviving swallows became ever better adapted at evading approaching vehicles, the number of casualties plummeted.
> When researchers consulted the bird collections of eight natural history museums in North America and took measurements on the shape of the wings of 312 starlings, they discovered something interesting. The starlings’ wings had gradually become more rounded over time, because the secondary flight feathers (at the bird’s “lower arm”, closest to the body) had become elongated by some 4%.
> It is precisely this quick-response benefit of more rounded wings that may be one of the reasons that the settler starlings evolved. In those 120 years since Schieffelin had released the starlings’ founding fathers in Central Park, the human population in western North America (the part of the continent that the starling expanded into) grew almost fifty-fold. What had been tiny settlements when the starling arrived blossomed into metropolises in a matter of decades. And with urbanisation came new dangers for urban birds: cats and cars. It is quite likely that this is what caused the American starlings to evolve a wing shape that helped them get out of the way of a pouncing cat or a speeding motorcar hurtling towards them.
The answers are out there if you actually look for them, you know.
you mean micro vs macro evolution i think, and it might be interesting for you to look at those terms?
this article , like darwins findings which there are proof for, are all about micro evolution - the environment and social circumstances triggering minor changes. i dont think (but ofcourse, i didnt do any experiements on it... ) that these 'new species' have new DNA. (and really.. that means they aren't actually new species... guess people are confused about what race and species actually mean. but that's another story :D... )
I live in Singapore (one of the places he talks about in the book) and I can see anecdotal examples of the kind of things he talks about in the book, like urban birds being less anxious around humans compared to forest birds.