Evolution in Tasmanian Devils? Nothing New Here.

There's a curious story about Tasmanian Devils circulating the science news. Typically, they mate around two years of age, but a tumor has been killing severe numbers of the little devils, and many of them are dying before they have a chance to mate. But a newly published shows there has been a sixteen-fold increase in the number of devils mating at one year.

The species seems to have altered its instincts of sexual activity and everyone's excited that this is evolution's way of preserving the species. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch editorialized with almost visible glee, as if pointing at the silly creationists:

"Researchers studying, of all things, Tasmanian devils, have documented significant biological changes that occurred over about 12 years... Before the cancer appeared, virtually all female devils reached sexual maturity at age two... the number capable of breeding at the age of one — what scientists call 'precocious breeding' — has jumped 16-fold.

University of Tasmania zoologist Menna Jones reported the change in this week's edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 'We could be seeing evolution occurring before our eyes,' she told the AP.

That's not likely to sit well with the anti-evolution crowd, which prefers its devils with horns, pitchforks and a tail..."

I'll ignore the fact that pitchforks and tails are not actually included in the doctrine of any of the several major religions that discount evolution. In the commentators' haste to shout a "gotcha" at creationists, they brushed right over the fact that no genetic evolution has taken place here.

I'm reminded of the infamous white moth / black moth event, where changing numbers of different colored moths was said to indicate evolution in color as an adaptation to survive in cities where smog turned the trees from white to black, when really all that was happening was different shades of already existing moths were finding it easier or harder to survive, depending on what shade the trees were.

And all that's happening today is that the earlier mating Tasmanian Devils are spreading faster than the late bloomers, since the late bloomers are dying before they can bloom. If there's been a 16-fold increase, that means early mating isn't a new phenomenon - it just happened less often in the past. No genetic mutations, no passing on of new traits - just good ol' natural selection selecting one already-existing trait over another as the environment changes.

The local newspaper loves to disparage creationists for a lack of intelligence and not paying attention to science, but I have to wonder at the scientific smarts of their own editorialists - and that university zoologist - if they so readily conclude that tangible evolution could actually take place in a mere 12 years.