
Darwin comes to town: how cities are creating new species - Udik
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/jul/23/darwin-comes-to-town-how-cities-are-creating-new-species
======
sohkamyung
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.

~~~
pjmlp
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.

~~~
mercer
Pigeons in Amsterdam often don't even flinch at approaching bikes and just
sidestep what would otherwise probably be death or serious injury.

~~~
siberianbear
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.

~~~
mercer
Yeah, these urban feathered dinosaurs are shameless everywhere.

------
everdev
I just saw a YouTube video yesterday about how Pablo Escobar took some hippos
from Africa and shipped them to Colombia.

It sounds like they started changing pretty quickly with the new climate and
no predators.

If the population keeps increasing, apparently at some point it'll be
classified as a new type of hippo.

[https://youtu.be/C_fj9sEVMeE](https://youtu.be/C_fj9sEVMeE)

~~~
guelo
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?

~~~
ndr
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UHFHT1WhPc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UHFHT1WhPc)
if you want to see some

------
rosser
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_.

~~~
jibal
If anti-evolutionists were to abandon their position due to evidence, they
would have long ago.

~~~
throwawy3589
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.

~~~
empath75
Random drive by racist comments by throwaway accounts are one of the least
appealing aspects of hacker news.

~~~
throwawy3589
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.

~~~
jibal
"Please explain to me how humans are immune to natural selection"

Why should he do that? He never claimed that -- it's a strawman of your own
making.

------
xefer
There has to be evolutionary pressure on animals to avoid cars on the road. I
wonder if there is any evidence that road kill numbers are reducing?

~~~
vanderZwan
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.

~~~
xefer
I was thinking more about squirrels and such

