Scientists have confirmed something that I assumed was true: as humans hunt, their prey gets smaller:
Hunting and gathering has a profound impact on animals and plants, driving an evolutionary process that makes them become smaller and reproduce earlier, U.S. researchers reported on Monday.Their study of hunting, fishing and collecting of 29 different species shows that under human pressure, creatures on average become 20 percent smaller and their reproductive age advances by 25 percent.
The human tendency to seek large “trophies” appears to drive evolution much faster than hunting by other predators, which pick off the small and the weak, the researchers report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“As predators, humans are a dominant evolutionary force,” said Chris Darimont of the University of California, Santa Cruz. “It’s an ideal recipe for rapid trait change.”