Paleo-Myth Number 4: By Sheer Force of Will

I am not gonna lie, today the scathing reviews of After Earth coming out really made my day. I have been drumming up hostility for this movie for a while now. First of all, Jaden Smith is annoying-  its not usually seen as cool to hate on kids but this brat really annoys me. I don't feel too bad about my anti-Jade Smith sentiment because I am not alone. I mean just look at

this young douche-bag in the making. Let's hope this kid spirals into hardcore drug abuse when he realizes he has no talent and only got movie roles by the Will-power of his father.

But we can't rest all of the blame on Jaden's narrow shoulders. Will Smith is continuing to lose touch with reality. Will does have talent- Parents Just Don't Understand was the first cassette tape I owned and still is a great song and he does a good job at acting when he highlights his strengths- his humanity, natural warmth and charm. But none of these attributes are put on display in his decidedly wooden performance as Cipher. And he conceived and bank-rolled the film so he gets the lion's share of the blame. Unfortunately this film will probably only put a dent in the Smith franchise and him and his family will continue to spread their tentacles of mediocrity onto film goers for many years into the future.

But the person who will be hit hardest by this dreck of a film will probably be M. Night Shyamalan. A man who in the past revitalized suspense films and was poised to be the next Hitchcock but who has of late been floundering. Let's hope After Earth is not his death knell.

But the real victim in this film is the subject of "future evolution". In the film, set to take place 1000 years into the future on planet earth- a biota has emerged hostile to human life. Apparently in sort of a homicidal GAIA like scenario the life forms on earth react to humans in sort of a collective inflammatory response. Oh yeah atmospheric conditions are too low in oxygen for humans to breath (despite the redwood forests everywhere) and I guess the whole world experiences a deep freeze nightly. Both of which are never explained. I guess if you read to and subscribe to wack-ass sci-fi stories as a religion you might start to write wack-ass sci-fi stories too.

But back to evolution and the popular misconceptions about evolution this film embellishes- the actual subject of this post.

Future evolution is a topic of much interest to me and hopefully many of the readers of this blog. It has been written about by many, most notably Scottish geologist, illustrator and author Dougal Dixon. In his speculative ventures into the zoology of the future Dixon uses sound evolutionary concepts and also draws upon patterns in the fossil record. To borrow from scripture one of the repeated patterns he invokes is that " the meek shall inherit the earth"and that the insignificant creatures of today can become the dominant creatures of tomorrow. Some of his coolest critters therefore are wolf/deer like derived rats and nightmarish terrestrial bats.

 I really doubt the fresh prince has read much or any of Dixon (although he probably reads a lot weirder stuff). No doubt the script/movie could have benefited much by the creative input of a man like Dixon or some other evolutionary biologist. Sheesh they probably could have had any number of paleontologists add input for, say the price of a days catering on a big budget film or maybe even for free. Face palm.

But instead you have troops of predatory baboons, giant birds of prey, and somehow a giant scimitar cat re-evolved. All of which happened in 1000 years!!! Evolution does not happen that fast!!! 

Secondly, all these critters and the biota as a whole it seems, are 'evolved' to kill humans.  Sounds like Lamarckian evolution to me!!! Evolution is not directed it is blind and groping. Double face palm.

This is all really unfortunate because this movie will put a smudge on any attempt at "future evolution" pictures of the future. Will Smith should have put down Dianetics, hired some real paleontologists/evolutionary biologists, gave the critters the necessary time to evolve into cool stuff, and dropped the annoying non-accent he uses. And also kept his damn son out of the movie- and all future movies. Go read this blog post by Brian Switek about other repeated evolutionary mistakes in film.

With After Earth we now complete the trifecta of Scientology backed films that tanked. First was Travolta's Battlefield Earth- often referred to as one of the worst movies ever- which had some definite scientology leanings. Second was Tom Cruise in Rock of Ages- horrible, horrible, horrible- no real scientology subscript but Cruise is like some kind of demigod in that religion so whenever he fails it is good for humanity. And finally rounding out the trifecta of crap is After Earth- with its "Danger is real, Fear is a choice" tagline- a definite subscript of scientology.

I now imagine some poor scientologist who got audited by the ORG and falls short of expectations. Then he/she gets sent to the dungeon (this actually exists!). Playing on loop will be Battlefield Earth, Rock of Ages, and After Earth. The horror, the horror.

Cheers!

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Is North America Ready For the Coywolf???

No this is not the latest sci-fi channel original monster mash-up, what you may have already heard back-cabin rumors about is true, coyotes (Canis latrans) and wolves (Canis lupus) are, and have been for quite some time, interbreeding in many parts of their overlapping range. The resulting canid, dubbed a coywolf, roughly intermediate in size between a coyote and wolf, behaviorally shares several characteristics from both species. Like the wolf it shows a propensity to form packs- readily with both wolves and coyotes- and to hunt large ungulate prey. But like the coyote, and unlike the wolf, the coywolf does not have innate fear of humans and readily breeds, hunts, and lives in proximity to human habitation. North American wolves are relatively recent immigrants to the New World, evolving in India and moving across Beringia at roughly the same time modern humans did. Therefore the wolf has a long shared evolutionary history with various tool using bipedal hominids- and knows to avoid them. Coyotes evolved in the New World acting as jackal analogs alongside the larger cats, bears and dire wolves of the Pleistocene- now all extinct. Because they are much smaller and more adaptable in human presence coyotes are regular inhabitants of suburban and even urban settings ( I myself have chased a coyote out of my front yard which had cornered a neighbors' cat). In a sense the coywolf is a new superpredator for the modern age. Adaptable, large, powerful and able to tackle large prey, sociable, and able to live close to human habitation.

And a recent open access paper suggests human action (ala Frankenstein's Monster) may have played a pivotal role in the creation of what many consider a newly evolving species. Here is the abstract:


Contemporary evolution through human-induced hybridization occurs
throughout the taxonomic range. Formerly allopatric species appear especially
susceptible to hybridization. Consequently, hybridization is expected to be more
common in regions with recent sympatry owing to human activity than in areas
of historical range overlap. Coyotes (Canis latrans) and gray wolves (C. lupus)
are historically sympatric in western North America. Following European settlement gray wolf range contracted, whereas coyote range expanded to include eastern North America. Furthermore, wolves with New World (NW) mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) haplotypes now extend from Manitoba to Que´bec in Canada and hybridize with gray wolves and coyotes. Using mtDNA and 12 microsatellite markers, we evaluated levels of wolf-coyote hybridization in regions
where coyotes were present (the Canadian Prairies, n = 109 samples) and
absent historically (Que´bec, n = 154). Wolves with NW mtDNA extended from
central Saskatchewan (51°N, 69°W) to northeastern Que´bec (54°N, 108°W).
On the Prairies, 6.3% of coyotes and 9.2% of wolves had genetic profiles suggesting wolf-coyote hybridization. In contrast, 12.6% of coyotes and 37.4% of wolves in Que´bec had profiles indicating hybrid origin. Wolves with NW and Old World (C. lupus) mtDNA appear to form integrated populations in both regions. Our results suggest that hybridization is more frequent in historically
allopatric populations. Range shifts, now expected across taxa following climate
change and other human influence on the environment, might therefore promote contemporary evolution by hybridization.

All right what does all that mean? Well first a little history lesson. Wolves used to inhabit the entire Eastern seaboard. A campaign of eradication, headed by no less than the Bureau of Land Management, extirpated the wolf from the East Coast of America.

Coyotes, which had long lived together with wolves in the west (sympatry) but never lived alongside wolves in the east (allopatry) began expanding their range both north and east into North America. These coyotes began meeting up with remnant populations of Canadian wolves as well as wolves moving down through the Great Lakes region from Canada. Now normally wolves will kill coyotes where they have a long history of ecological segregation. But this ecological separation was not established in this hybrid zone of the northeast. Long story short a lonely male wolf met up with a female coyote and the coywolf was born.

Some see the advent of the coywolf as a restoration of ecological balance in eastern forests- where deer populations have been without a significant predator for several generations (save humans). Others fear that the coywolf spells trouble for the genetic integrity of the true wolf and see the coywolf as a strange aberration that needs to be eliminated. Ranchers fear the economic loss from a new large predator on their herds.

Whatever your opinion of the cowolf is we are sure to hear a lot more about it because it raises some big questions; Is the coywolf federally protected like the wolf? or not, like the coyote? Do we intervene on behalf of the wolf to protect its ecological role? Will the coywolf, with its large size and lack of fear of humans pose a danger to humans?

On a final footnote the recent lone wolf who immigrated to California from Oregon, OR7 or Journey as he is known, was spotted cavorting with several coyotes in May. Could we be seeing the beginning of hybrid populations arising on both coasts?

Pertinencia

Canid hybridization: contemporary evolution in human-modified habitats
http://rewilding.org/rewildit/images/Canid-hybridization-contemporary-evolution-in-human-modified-landscapes.pdf

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