Hey Thoughty2 here. Have you ever seen a flying bear? No? That’s because they don’t exist! But fast forward 100 years and flying bears
could be freakin’ everywhere, okay maybe not flying bears. But something equally as amazing and terrifying
is happening across the entire animal kingdom. Creatures far and wide are evolving faster
than ever before. And the ways in which they’re evolving is
unlike anything we’ve ever seen. Through our vast studies into evolution we’ve
realised that it takes roughly one million years to notice a significant change in an
animal’s characteristics. A major leap in its evolutionary life. As we all know Zoologists, Bioscientists and
other experts have been constantly monitoring animals all over the world for hundreds of
years. However, in the past 50 years a huge change
in how animals evolve has been observed. Instead of a million years some animals have
made huge evolutionary jumps in just a few decades and in some cases as little as 20
years! In 1989 the international community passed
a ban on the sale of ivory worldwide, in an attempt to stop the poaching of elephants
for their extremely valuable ivory tusks. Elephant poaching dropped significantly in
the years that followed and elephant numbers in the wild started to rise again. But despite its illegality, the demand for
ivory never went away, especially in China, where’s it’s highly coveted. The two tusks from a single elephant can sell
for up to $400,000 on the black market and so in this highly lucrative market criminal
gangs have met the ever-present demand for the illegal collector’s item. Poaching levels have risen once again and
sadly, today around 35,000 elephants are slaughtered every year for their ivory. That’s over 5% of the global elephant population. In fact, the number of elephants poached every
year is now far greater than before the ban in 1989. But the elephants are fighting back, yet they
don’t even know how. Every year more and more elephants are born
without any tusks. Because today an elephant is more likely to
survive and reproduce if it has no valuable tusks for poachers to kill it over, even if
this means it can’t defend itself against rival elephants. In Zambia the amount of tusk-less female elephants
rose from 10 percent to 40 percent in just 20 years. That’s evolution happening before our eyes
in an astonishingly short 20 years, and it’s all because of the actions of a few unsavoury
humans. In some areas of South Africa 98 percent of
female elephants have no ivory. Most humans like living in cities, goodness
knows why, all the research shows that we’re considerably less happy and less safe in cities. But nonetheless we have a natural desire to
swarm around giant metal hubs of weird modern art and 24-hour fast food restaurants. And our cities are growing, at a rate faster
than ever before. Currently 54% of the global population live
in urban centers. By 2050 It’s estimated to rise to 70%. This will of course mean a far greater percentage
of the Earth’s natural habitats will be destroyed so we can build more Mc-Kentucy-Fried-Subways
with vast splattering’s of Vegan Cafes, to support the growing urban population. This is of course bad news for avocados; avocado
abuse is already rising at a phenomenal rate. But it’s even worse news for the animal
kingdom, or maybe it isn’t. Destruction of natural habitats is of course
devastating to the species that once called that place home. But like the great African elephants, animals
far and wide are supercharging their evolution to adapt to life inside the city. Human’s are forcing them to, because it’s
either adapt to the urban environment or become extinct. Coyotes are traditionally found inhabiting
the great grasslands of middle America but in the past few decades they have spread across
the whole country and now inhabit every major city across America, where they have found
themselves a unique home. They are highly threated in their natural
habitat, the US government kills 400,000 coyotes every year, under the guise of “Wildlife
Services” they call it “population management”. So heavily persecuted, coyotes have been forced
to masterfully adapt to the urban lifestyle. They will eat quite literally anything, from
litter to bits of clothing found lying around. Amazingly, after being monitored extensively
on CCTV it was observed that coyotes monitor traffic patterns and vehicle speeds in order
to cross roads safely. In Chicago alone there are an estimated 2,000
coyotes successfully living within the urban sprawl. Urban birds are also adapting their street
smarts. Scientists set up problem-solving tests for
different species of birds living in cities and then carried out the same test on rural
birds. The city-slickers were found to be significantly
smarter than their rural counterparts and were able to solve the problems far quicker. Urban birds have learnt to steal sugar packets
from tables outside restaurants and cafes and even steal food from people’s plates
when they’re not looking. These may not be examples of true evolution,
where a physical mutation becomes the norm, but they do represent huge changes in the
way animals behave due to human intervention. And this is exactly how evolution starts,
it won’t be long before urban-dwelling animals do evolve physically to meet the new demands
and challenges that a city lifestyle presents them with. And some already have. Just look at what humans have done with their
best friend, the dog. Humans created dogs. 15,000 years ago there were no dogs. We formed an unlikely relationship with grey
wolves and over the next few thousand years as our relationship with wolves evolved, so
did they. These fierce predators at the top of their
respective food chain became more docile, their bodies shrunk, and so did their teeth
and paws, their ears went all floppy, so us humans would have to scratch behind them more
often. There are now hundreds of breeds of dogs around
the world, with vastly different characteristics and personalities. Yet they are all able to reproduce with one-another
because they all came from the same species. Now if human intervention is able to create
an entirely new species of animal within such a tiny period of time, 15,000 years. Then the possibilities are endless for how
other animals can and will change over the next 1,000 years and beyond. The common theme here is that we aren’t
trying to change animals, we didn’t intend to alter the wolf so radically, but through
rapid evolution, they have adapted themselves to fit around us humans. The exact same process is now happening on
an unimaginably large scale worldwide, due to urbanisation. The effects of human driven evolution in animals
is not just a theory. Like with the African elephants and their
ivory, the effects have been observed over countless species of animals in recent decades. Songbirds have changed their tune so their
acoustics are not lost within the constant noise of the city below. Spiders in cities are getting far bigger than
their rural cousins, calm down, I’m not going to show an image. Insects, rats and mice are becoming immune
to insecticides and rat poisons. And bad news for those who are squeamish about
bugs, because bed bugs are fast becoming highly resistant to all the harsh chemicals we’ve
been throwing at them to try and exterminate them. In the past few decades bed bugs have become
250 times more resistant to pesticides and have developed significantly harder shells. Even weeds are getting in on the action, they’ve
developed a resistance to weed-killers, meaning we’re now going to have to rename all weed-killers
to weed-not-killers. Flowers that are often picked by romantic
park dwelling couples are becoming shorter and shorter every year, so they can hide amongst
the other plants and are therefore less likely to get spotted and plucked from the ground. On a far larger scale pretty much all species
of animal across the planet have changed their fertility cycles due to global warming. Many species now breed earlier on in the year
than they used to, to account for the messed up seasons brought on by global warming. Another of the biggest problems that our urban
lifestyles are causing animals is chemical pollution. We use a lot of packaging and buy a lot of
shiny new technology, all of this requires the use of chemicals to produce, a lot of
these harmful chemicals will inevitably find their way into rivers. Some fish are unable to adapt to this pollution
and are wiped out. Other species however have rapidly evolved
to become entirely resistant to toxins within the water. Atlantic killifish found in Passaic River
and Newark Bay in New Jersey are now able to tolerate toxicity levels 8,000 times higher
than other fish. A trait they’ve been forced to develop due
to a nearby chemical factory leaking its toxic leftovers into the river. They can literally swim around in horrifically
toxic water all day long without any ill effects whatsoever. The amazing thing is secluded populations
of the killifish developed this anti-toxic adaptation at the exact same time, without
coming into contact with each other. Humans may not be the most considerate of
species. For a long time, we have disregarded the needs
of our animal cousins in exchange for rapid industrialisation and urbanisation. So it’s rather endearing to know that nature
will mould itself to fit around our foibles. And thankfully nature is powerful and smart
enough to be able to change so rapidly to a new, unhospitable environment, for if it
wasn’t many of the incredible creatures that we’ve come to care about would probably
be extinct today. Thanks for watching. If you enjoy my videos click here to support
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