Rattle Snake evolution

[herpitologica]

Ok this is on a slightly different note,i was watching a wildlife channel and they where showing the rattler round ups they have in america.They literaly kill thousands each year.The guys are now finding less and less rattlers each year due to the fact that they no longer rattle when some one is close.Can evolution happen this fast that the one's who don't rattle breed on a trait not to rattle??

Split from original topic - BushSnake

[Neurotoxic]

I saw the same program! I think we still have so much to learn from nature! I would think if a particular species feels threatened, it will take that step to evolve and protect its kind. I dont think it was fast evolution... these round ups have been going on for centuries, so its been an evolution in progress. Who knows, they might loose the rattle altogether at the end of it.

[Cerberus]

Evolution and Adaptation are not one and the same. This is a physical adaptation to a situation, not a genetic mutation, to me if it was evolutionary, they would now be called rattle-less snakes. Thats my opinion, all welcome to challenge my chain of thought with a bit of their own perspective

[Neurotoxic]

hmmm perhaps a series of adaptations to a particular species can be clasified as evolution?

[fredsmith]

I also saw the program, was a very interesting show indeed.
Whether it's evolution or adaptation, I don't know, we can ague the correct terminology back and forth till the cows come home. Nonetheless from what I could gather, it's more of a behavioural change than a physical change?
But what was interesting to see was that even though the rattlers were antagonised, they still didn't rattle.
Amazing is the ability of these reptiles to modify their bahavioural pattern in an effort to survive.

[gaboon69]

Keep in mind that evolution may manifest itself due to rather recent shifts as was shown with differentiation of the Daboia complex (ruselli and siamensis). I doubt that the snakes underwent a genetic change though, but hey, lets hear it from WW.

[Neurotoxic]

Evolution - Change in the genetic composition of a population during successive generations, as a result of natural selection acting on the genetic variation among individuals, and resulting in the development of new species.

Hence - Soon to be our Rattleless snakes.... lol

Adaptation - An alteration or adjustment in structure or habits, often hereditary, by which a species or individual improves its condition in relationship to its environment.

Ill give it to you Fredsmith and cerberus in this century, next century their rattles will be falling off!

So this supports my theory, a series of adaptations leads to evolution...

[BushSnake]

I've seen parts of that program too, but what I find extremely saddening is to see that a "developed" country still has these rituals, but they all look down at third world countries because we "don't know better" or "we can't teaching the rural people", etc. Makes you think about who really cares...

Out of curiosity, does someone here know whether the rattle snakes still rattle when threatened by a natural predator like jackal , coyotes or whatever their natural predators are? Because if they still use that against natural predators, then it becomes even more interesting. If they don't, they may very well have lost their primary defence mechanism and may become extinct in the future (or develop something to compensate for the loss...like an even more potent venom that kills in milliseconds ). Just my line of thoughts...

[Matt Robinson]

I dont know that an individual rattle snake can decide to stop rattling (adaptation) but in the sense as the species could stop rattling it is possible. My thinking is that the snakes that are less prone to rattle are not found and so not killed, so they go on to breed and maybe pass on their non rattling genes? So it is natural selection but with humans as one of the forces causing this adaptation. Anyway just what i think.

[herpitologica]

The 100th monkey theory immediately came to mind, im posting it here for those who dont know it - LJ


A story about social change.

By Ken Keyes Jr.

The Japanese monkey, Macaca Fuscata, had been observed in the wild for a period of over 30 years.

In 1952, on the island of Koshima, scientists were providing monkeys with sweet potatoes dropped in the sand. The monkey liked the taste of the raw sweet potatoes, but they found the dirt unpleasant.

An 18-month-old female named Imo found she could solve the problem by washing the potatoes in a nearby stream. She taught this trick to her mother. Her playmates also learned this new way and they taught their mothers too.

This cultural innovation was gradually picked up by various monkeys before the eyes of the scientists. Between 1952 and 1958 all the young monkeys learned to wash the sandy sweet potatoes to make them more palatable. Only the adults who imitated their children learned this social improvement. Other adults kept eating the dirty sweet potatoes.

Then something startling took place. In the autumn of 1958, a certain number of Koshima monkeys were washing sweet potatoes -- the exact number is not known. Let us suppose that when the sun rose one morning there were 99 monkeys on Koshima Island who had learned to wash their sweet potatoes. Let's further suppose that later that morning, the hundredth monkey learned to wash potatoes.

THEN IT HAPPENED!

By that evening almost everyone in the tribe was washing sweet potatoes before eating them. The added energy of this hundredth monkey somehow created an ideological breakthrough!

But notice: A most surprising thing observed by these scientists was that the habit of washing sweet potatoes then jumped over the sea...Colonies of monkeys on other islands and the mainland troop of monkeys at Takasakiyama began washing their sweet potatoes.

Thus, when a certain critical number achieves an awareness, this new awareness may be communicated from mind to mind.

Although the exact number may vary, this Hundredth Monkey Phenomenon means that when only a limited number of people know of a new way, it may remain the conscious property of these people.

But there is a point at which if only one more person tunes-in to a new awareness, a field is strengthened so that this awareness is picked up by almost everyone!

From the book "The Hundredth Monkey" by Ken Keyes, Jr.
The book is not copyrighted and the material may be reproduced in whole or in part.

Read the whole book.

Please Note:

The 100th Monkey Theory has been on the WOW site since 1996, and we occasionally receive letters claiming that it was a hoax or fake.

We contacted Penny Gillespie, who was married to Ken Keyes and participated in his work and writing. Here is her response:

I'm not sure what you mean by "fake." The Hundredth Monkey is a real book and hundreds of thousands of copies were printed and circulated, often through university courses. People bought them by the case and gave them away.

The story of the hundredth monkey came from a writing by Rupert Sheldrake.

After our book was printed, there was some question about whether the study was authentic. Ken presented the story as a legend, or phenomenon; the concepts of morphogenetic fields and critical mass are very true and the story serves to illustrate them.

Hope that answers your question.

All the best,

Penny Gillespie
President's Club, Platinum Wellness Consultant
www.5Pillars.com/pennygillespie

We were also forwarded the following article that "puts a new light on this popular story"
The Hundredth Monkey Revisited

by Elaine Myers

Going back to the original sources
puts a new light on this popular story


Is there some magic key that provides a short cut to cultural transformation?

THE STORY OF "The Hundredth Monkey" has recently become popular in our culture as a strategy for social change. Lyall Watson first told it in Lifetide (pp147- 148), but its most widely known version is the opening to the book The Hundredth Monkey, by Ken Keyes. (See below.) The story is based on research with monkeys on a northern Japanese Island, and its central idea is that when enough individuals in a population adopt a new idea or behavior, there occurs an ideological breakthrough that allows this new awareness to be communicated directly from mind to mind without the connection of external experience and then all individuals in the population spontaneously adopt it. "It may be that when enough of us hold something to be true, it becomes true for everyone." (Watson, p148)

I found this to be a very appealing and believable idea. The concept of Jung's collective unconscious, and the biologists' morphogenetic fields (IN CONTEXT #6} offer parallel stories that help strengthen this strand of our imaginations. Archetypes, patterns, or fields that are themselves without mass or energy, could shape the individual manifestations of mass and energy. The more widespread these fields are, the greater their influence on the physical level of reality. We sometimes mention the Hundredth Monkey Phenomenon when we need supporting evidence of the possibility of an optimistic scenario for the future, especially a future based on peace instead of war. If enough of us will just think the right thoughts, then suddenly, almost magically, such ideas will become reality.

However, when I went back to the original research reports cited by Watson, I did not find the same story that he tells. Where he claims to have had to improvise details, the research reports are quite precise, and they do not support the "ideological breakthrough" phenomenon. At first I was disappointed; but as I delved deeper into the research I found a growing appreciation for the lessons the real story of these monkeys has for us. Based on what I have learned from the Japan Monkey Center reports in Primates, vol. 2, vol. 5 and vol. 6, here is how the real story seems to have gone.

Up until 1958, Keyes' description follows the research quite closely, although not all the young monkeys in the troop learned to wash the potatoes. By March, 1958, 15 of the 19 young monkeys (aged two to seven years} and 2 of the 11 adults were washing sweet potatoes. Up to this time, the propagation of the innovative behavior was on an individual basis, along family lines and playmate relationships. Most of the young monkeys began to wash the potatoes when they were one to two and a half years old. Males older than 4 years, who had little contact with the young monkeys, did not acquire the behavior.

By 1959, the sweet potato washing was no longer a new behavior to the group. Monkeys that had acquired the behavior as juveniles were growing up and having their own babies. This new generation of babies learned sweet potato washing behavior through the normal cultural pattern of the young imitating their mothers. By January, 1962, almost all the monkeys in the Koshima troop, excepting those adults born before 1950, were observed to be washing their sweet potatoes. If an individual monkey had not started to wash sweet potatoes by the time he was an adult, he was unlikely to learn it later, regardless of how widespread it became among the younger members of the troop.

In the original reports, there was no mention of the group passing a critical threshold that would impart the idea to the entire troop. The older monkeys remained steadfastly ignorant of the new behavior. Likewise, there was no mention of widespread sweet potato washing in other monkey troops. There was mention of occasional sweet potato washing by individual monkeys in other troops, but I think there are other simpler explanations for such occurrences. If there was an Imo in one troop, there could be other Imo-like monkeys in other troops.

Instead of an example of the spontaneous transmission of ideas, I think the story of the Japanese monkeys is a good example of the propagation of a paradigm shift, as in Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. The truly innovative points of view tend to come from those on the edge between youth and adulthood. The older generation continues to cling to the world view they grew up with. The new idea does not become universal until the older generation withdraws from power, and a younger generation matures within the new point of view.

It is also an example of the way that simple innovations can lead to extensive cultural change. By using the water in connection with their food, the Koshima monkeys began to exploit the sea as a resource in their environment. Sweet potato washing led to wheat washing, and then to bathing behavior and swimming, and the utilization of sea plants and animals for food. "Therefore, provisioned monkeys suffered changes in their attitude and value system and were given foundations on which pre-cultural phenomena developed." (M Kawai, Primates, Vol 6, #1, 1965).

What does this say about morphogenetic fields, and the collective unconscious? Not very much, but the "ideological breakthrough" idea is not what Sheldrake's theory of morphogenetic fields would predict anyway. That theory would recognize that the behavior of the older monkeys (not washing) also is a well-established pattern. There may well be a "critical mass" required to shift a new behavior from being a fragile personal idiosyncrasy to being a well-established alternative, but creating a new alternative does not automatically displace older alternatives. It just provides more choices. It is possible that the washing alternative established by the monkeys on Koshima Island did create a morphogenetic field that made it easier for monkeys on other islands to "discover" the same technique, but the actual research neither supports nor denies that idea. It remains for other cultural experiments and experiences to illuminate this question.

What the research does suggest, however, is that holding positive ideas (as important a step as this is) is not sufficient by itself to change the world. We still need direct communication between individuals, we need to translate our ideas into action, and we need to recognize the freedom of choice of those who choose alternatives different from our own.

[herpitologica]

also found this...
"Rattlesnakes can bite without injecting venom. They usually save their venom for their prey. The king snake is totally immune from the rattlesnakes venom. Rattlesnakes use their rattle as a warning to others to stay away. The king snake is deaf though, and can't hear the rattle noise. What is really strange is that rattlesnakes know this, and will stop rattling once they realize that it is a king snake they are trying to scare."
http://www.huntingsociety.org/Rattlesnakes.html

[froot]

MY hypothesis is much along the lines of MAtty's. I believe that within a species, individuals have slight variations in behavioural traits coded in them that makes them unique in a way from other individuals in the species. I believe that this is how natural selection determines what behavioural traits characterises a species, and that these slight deviations from the normal understood habits of an animal is one of the ongoing miracles that has ensured the variation of life in the animal/plant kingdom we see today. As generations of the species progress, unfavourable behavioural traits are 'weeded' out leaving the survivors who made it through and procreated because their habits helped ensure their survival. Other new behavour or physical deviances may also add to the survivability of a species and off on a tangent goes a new way of looking/behaving which is genetically passed on to next generations. This for me is how a new species comes into being.

In this case people have made themselves a tool of evolution that adjusts the course of progression that the rattlers are taking. More rattlesnakes that rattle are found than ones that do not rattle and so the new determining factor of survivability is weather the snake announces it's position or not. So the noisy ones get 'weeded' out along with that behavioural trait of the species which has now become unfavourable. This new code is then passed on to the next generations and the rattle on the tail may no longer be needed and indviduals with smaller rattles now fit within the now favourable code of behaviour. This is how I believe physical changes evolve and the rattle will in time be gone altogether.
The question of population sustainability also comes to mind.

I think it's bloody sad if you ask me.

[WW]

I don't think there has been any scientific study of whether rattlesnakes rattle less as a result of human persecution, although it's a plausible hypothesis, and many people claim it to be the case.

Evolution by definition involves genetic change, at least in the character involved. An individual changing its behaviour is not evolution, it's plasticity.

IF rattlesnakes are indeed evolving to rattle less, then the process is simply that those snakes with a genetically-encoded tendency to rattle more tend to die sooner and leave fewer offspring than those snakes with a genetically encoded tendency to rattle less. Therefore the "quiet" genes will be passed on to more members of the next generation than the "noisy" genes, and the population will gradually consist of more and more "quiet" individuals. Natural selection at work. If the selective pressure is severe enough (i.e., the "noisy genes" result in drastically fewer offspring compared to the "quiet" genes), then you could easily see change in a population over a few generations.

Note that
(i) this can only work if differences between individuals are at least partially controlled by genes; if the behaviour is entirely learned, then it cannot be passed on to the next generation.
(ii) a species under threat does not "take steps" to protect itself - natural selection acts on what variation is present to start with or arises through further mutation.

Cheers,

WW

[herpitologica]

youre right.. its just so very sad froot. thats the only thing that clings to me! but i saw that with this mass murder for the rattlesnake festival they eat them etc.. the snakes will never win!

[WW]

OK, Froot beat me to it - great minds think alike .

The only addition is that there is no evidence at all of rattle size diminishing, and only anecdotal evidence of decreasing tendency to rattle. Moreover, the snakes may have or evolve predator-specific behaviour patterns, as they already to against king snakes.