American Scientist

To the Editors:

When I read the Briefings section of the January–February issue, I was struck by the story about elephants rapidly evolving away from growing tusks as the ivory tusks had become a liability placing them in great danger from poachers. I’ve always thought of evolution as being a slow process involving hundreds, if not thousands of generations. Now, I have a whole new perspective on how environmental pressures can rapidly affect even the biggest and strongest mammals on Earth.

One can only speculate on how these environmental pressures are currently directing our own evolution as human beings. For example, are we as a species currently evolving toward an existence that assimilates environmental plastic as an intrinsic property of our organism? How goes the elephant tusk, goes the human race?

Richard Simpson
Enumclaw, WA