Remember too, that evolution is not always onward and upward. Because of government subsidies to broken familes and triple-generation unemployables, we are now experienceing a reverse evolution, or devolution, in the mind of at least one Nobel Prize winner. This is because the lower classes are breeding at a faster rate than the more educated and successful classes.
See Walmart;)
The issue here is the island and the time span. Without establishing what the baseline was prior to their arrival how can you know that 22 isn’t a return to the norm?
Secondly, 141 years is an awfully short time span to ‘evolve’. Is this really macro-evolution or some other social factor? Did they even control for that? Did you see them listing a control population? Did they compare their results to other islands? Are they measuring the mean, mode or median age at which women give birth? Can you think of other causes that would lower the age at which women give birth?
Natural selection has been defeated or at least put on the defense as “the excess population” no longer naturally dies off. Natural selection knows no social boundaries as it would take a rich child as quickly as a poor. Yet today children rich and poor who may have died of natural causes decades ago, are living to adulthood. And as emotionally charged as childhood death is, death by natural causes served a purpose. Yet because fewer children die of natural causes, it maybe that support for abortion is in part do to this.
Just a random thought. Now off to work.
Hence, the movie “Idiocracy”. . . which seems more and more prophetic every year that passes. . .
“we are now experienceing a reverse evolution, or devolution, in the mind of at least one Nobel Prize winner”
Devolution is evolution. There is no reverse, because the process is neutral on the outcome. Who’s to say what’s upward or downward, better or worse, scientifically speaking? Whatever’s selected is selected, and what’s morally bad for the social organism is fine and dandy for the weak and stupid. So long as civilization lasts, that is, at which point they’ll die off and hunter-gatherers, or whatever, will take over and maybe we’ll be back to your “upward” trajectory.
Remove mrotality and provide free resources, and any population will, genetically or otherwise, shift towards a more r-selected reproductive strategy - avoid competition, mate early, mate promiscuously, and perform low investment child rearing.
It can only go on for so long, though, since there are not unlimited resources. Eventually resources will become limited, competition will enter the arena by necessity, and the population will shift to a more K-selected strategy. Unpleasant, but also unavoidable.
The bottom line is, even with man’s mastery of technology, he can’t produce the infintely supplied level of unlimited resources necessary to permanantly make r-selection a competitive advantage. Sooner or later nature will balance the scale with a sufficient level of harshness to restore evolutionary advancement.
Long before our world looks like the world in the movie Idiocracy, there would be a period of diminshed resources which would cull the r-selecteds through the necessary competition required to survive, and restore the balance to our species.
This study is just what one would expect in any species which saw abundant resources and limited competition for a short period.
And the proof is on the interwebs. These fellas amuse themselves by self-injecting saline solution to temporarily deform themselves.
Researchers should follow their progress to see if their "plumage display" attracts females leading to pro-creation. Might or might not be an even money bet that they in fact do find mates and eventually produce off spring. Unless their experiments include other body parts that could affect fertility.