Vegetarian, Vegan and Animal Rights

What makes this study so fascinating is that it offers evidence of rapid evolution in an animal that has a pretty long lifespan — 50 or 60 years — in the wild, said Hendry and Fred Allendorf, a professor emeritus at the University of Montana who was not involved in the research.

Studies of elephants “rarely can say anything about the genetic basis” of tusklessness, Hendry said. For years, researchers assumed that rapid evolution was common only in small species with short life cycles. Given these results, “Nobody can argue that evolution isn’t occurring, even in the biggest and longest-lived species,” he added.