Exilian

Art, Writing, and Learning: The Clerisy Quarter => History, Science, and Interesting Information - The Great Library => Topic started by: Jubal on May 31, 2024, 08:51:44 PM

Title: Urban wildlife and adaptations
Post by: Jubal on May 31, 2024, 08:51:44 PM
Not sure this is a yay so it's not fetting into that thread, but it's fascinating: BBC article today on how New York City's wildlife is mutating and changing (https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240531-the-mutant-wildlife-adapting-to-new-york-city) due to its urban isolation and changed diet.

(https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/1376xn/p0j1gsg1.jpg.webp)

I think the bit that most fascinated me was the mention of this paper (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5716853/), which suggests that the NYC population of white-footed mice is getting long term evolutionary change to their digestion to better cope with higher fat and sugar intake in their diets, as a result of them eating far more human-food leftovers. I don't think I'd realised that this sort of change was big enough in mammals to be measurable over the sort of span of time that New York has been urbanised.