"Poaching making China elephants evolve tuskless"

This is an interesting article. Evolution -- at least in my mind -- has always seemed an indomitable force of adaptation that pretty much happened on its own. Now, it seems that humans can actually influence the process, even if unintentionally.

Actually, now that I think about it, hunters in Texas (and I assume in other parts of North America) have already been influencing evolution. In this state, many hunters who eat venison prefer to shoot "spikes", those deer that grow single-tine antlers with no branches. The thinking goes that such spikes are genetically inferior to other male deer, and that increased taking of such animals will eventually ensure more deer with bigger racks.

Up until reading this article, I always took the spike argument with a grain of salt. I'm not so willing to, anymore.