Urban wildlife and adaptations

[Jubal]

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 due to its urban isolation and changed diet.



I think the bit that most fascinated me was the mention of this paper, 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.