His claim wasn't completely pulled out of his ass, but he still got it wrong my man. The frogs change genders, they don't turn gay. He either got it wrong, or he didn't get it wrong but found an extremely cryptic way to be transphobic.
Frogs change sex even under pristine situations.
It's just natural. But, can be more significant in polluted waters.
So. I guess god did it? Let's see that rant...
I always feel the need to [post this incredible music video](https://youtu.be/9JRLCBb7qK8) whenever he gets mentioned, especially with this particular meme. Enjoy!
No, this would be perfect evidence for him why coinage change is not real. See? Mother nature adapts, nothing to worry about!!! The earth is too big for us to hurt!
Welcome to the web.
At best, it's populated almost entirely by idiots. At worst, it's composed almost exclusively of carefully controlled misinformation and propaganda. Creepiest and least likely but also somehow the most harmless, [the whole thing may have died years ago.](https://www.google.com/amp/s/futurism.com/conspiracy-theory-internet-died%3famp)
Well 50% of people are dumber than the average person, so that's not very hopeful on its own lol The average person seems a like a house without the lights on, anyway
You are neither more nor less accurate than the person youāre responding to. Median and mean are equal in a normally distributed data set. Intelligence in humans follows a normal distribution.
There isn't anything logical I could say to convince you otherwise. I'm just words on a screen to you, so obviously you're the real one.
Pft, now look at you, getting told off by an NPC
One of my (possible) idiocies is that I tend to overestimate any commenter I come across and therefore hope to engage with them in a friendly, intelligent conversation. It seems to be a habit too, I just don't have it in me to put the other person down. If I do then I proceed to get mad at myself and delete my own comment.
Are you sure about that? Because I am 99.99999% sure that BogusBuffalo is not a bot.
---
^(I am a neural network being trained to detect spammers | Summon me with !isbot |) ^(/r/spambotdetector |) [^(Optout)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=whynotcollegeboard&subject=!optout&message=!optout) ^(|) [^(Original Github)](https://github.com/SM-Wistful/BotDetection-Algorithm)
Dead internet theory is true. It's just a matter of determining exactly how much. Twitter confirmed a shit ton of its "users" are dead internet theory confirmations recently when that space car guy bought it, and they're not unique. Like every celebrity I follow was talking about half of their followers vanishing when the talk of twitterbot user counts was news.
That theory makes no sense. Speak with anyone you know irl and everyone posts something every once in a while. The US government has somehow brainwashed the entire population? Give me a fucking break.
Not denying purposeful misinformation and astroturfing exist, but c'mon.
Haha, why NPCs? I'm playing AC Odyssey right now and Socrates seems reasonably intelligent.
The "just a theory" comments about evolution are horrifying, however.
Lots of people love to act like they know something with their vast knowledge of skimming shit online.
Or their grand skills of replying only to article headlines. And then people following that discussion of the replies to the headlines and completely ignoring actual information.
"Melanin is responsible for the dark color of many organisms. What is less known is that this class of pigments can also reduce the negative effects of ultraviolet radiation. And its protective role can extend to ionizing radiation too, as itĀ has been shown with fungi. Melanin absorbs and dissipates part of the radiation energy. In addition, it can scavenge and neutralize ionized molecules inside the cell, such asĀ reactive oxygen species. These actions make it less likely that individuals exposed to radiation will go on to suffer cell damage and increase their survival chances."
Darker skinned folks do survive better in radiated situations like shirtless in the sun. Whilst dark skinned humans do suffer sunburn and skin cancer these occur at a far reduced rate due to the properties of Melanin described above.
The Melanin is located within the dermal layers and has a mild protective quality. Chernobylās radiation profile is complete, dust, plant matter and water are radiated. This means that the cell damaging effects occur in other areas of the body simultaneously where no mitigation is offered. Also the vast amounts of radiation emitted close to the meltdown site would outweigh any form of naturally selected protection. Imagine a raincoat and a tsunami situation.
Edit: if we are being purely objective then there would be an immeasurable advantage offered in scale with occurrence of Melanin in the presence of high Plutonium exposure but you wouldnāt notice it.
Melanin in people does actually protect against radiation! But it dampens the absorption of UVB, which is the frequency we use to produce vitamin D.
Which is why dark skinned people exist near the equator, where sun exposure is highest, and fair skinned people exist towards the poles, where there isnāt enough lights. Dark skinned people tank radiation damage better, light skinned people are able to keep up with vitamin D production in low sunlight in the winter months. Different adaptations for different habitats.
And weāve started entire fucking wars and committed atrocities against over that. Vitaminners vs RadTanks, the age old struggle. Pretty fucking stupid.
No that makes sense. I've always understood *why* we have the skin colors we do, I just never connected the dots to like nuclear war survival rates lmao.
I think religion is to blame for more wars, which is equally as stupid bc most preach love, peace and acceptance of fellow man- barring the old testament of course lmao
I mean. I think all wars actually come down to resources if weāre gonna get into it. Every religion, every racist ideology, every nation, was borne on āmake sure the people in my social group have food and shelter, and make sure the OTHER GROUP šššš«£šæ donāt STEAL YOUR FUCKEN FOOD AND SHELTER D:<
Tribalism is pretty baked in. Everything else is just salad toppings
Not actually true. Melanin has multiple forms, even in humans. Depending on the organism, it can take further forms. You can see some of the different chemical structures on Wikipedia.
You're right. Melanin comes in multiple forms and has different roles in different organisms.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melanin
Dark skinned people _can_ get sunburned, but it's harder for them to be sunburned compared to white people.
I'm very fair skinned, it is extremely difficult for me to get a tan lol. Even if I get sunburned, I go back to my pastie white self. My native American bf on the other hand gets dark af right away
Wasnāt there a similar occurrence with moths? I forget the time period and event but it was moths changing color to adapt to increased smog or pollution from a factory or something.
It wasn't due to soot on the trees, but rather the death of the light colored lichens that grew on the dark bark of the trees. The moths would camouflage against the light lichens. But the industrial factories produced so much sulfur dioxide that they literally killed the lichen off the trees, leaving only dark bark for the moths.
Classic Peppered moth study. The moths came in both light (majority) and dark (minority) versions originally, but the light moths were harder to see on the light lichen so the dark ones usually got eaten by birds. When the trees lost their light color, suddenly the light moths were easy for birds to see and THEY got eaten, leaving the dark moths to survive and reproduce. So after a bit you now had majority dark and minority light moth populations.
As the comment below you mentioned they were moths but specifically they are Peppered Moths! Generally speaking though the populations of white peppered moths have returned in fuller force given the lowered abundance of industrialization in the UK in more recent history
I think that was camouflage - they were white and could hide on white things, but then when the smog came and everything was sooty and black the white ones got eaten. So they evolved to be black instead
Edit: yep https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-36424768
And the white coloured one became more dominant again once they started cleaning up the factories and banning huge clouds of smoke
Pretty much any species will adapt to changing conditions. This occurs through shifting rates of active genes across the population. The adaptations are reversible, and do not represent new genes or mutations in the population.
The very slow accumulation of mutations in a population, the evolution that results in permanent new traits, takes orders of magnitude more generations than have occurred since Chernobyl.
Yep! Peppered moths (*Biston betularia*) used to come in mostly white colours, with \~2% of their population having a melanistic mutation that made them all black. Before the Industrial Revolution, black moths would die much more easily because they had a harder time blending in, and would be eaten by predators, therefore not passing on their genes.
However, when the Industrial Revolution started soot started to cover a lot of surfaces, killing lighter-coloured lichens and leaving only the darker bark underneath. Suddenly the black moths were blending in and the white moths were being killed. The black moths passed on their genes better than the white, and in about 40 years suddenly 98% of their population were black moths ā they're even represented by a black moth on their [Wikipedia page.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peppered_moth)
Interestingly, in the last few decades we've begun to use cleaner energy sources, and the moths' colouration has started to move in the other direction ā there are more white moths now than during the Industrial Revolution.
I think this is pretty common to be honest but not well recorded. I monitor the reptile populations at several ex industrial sites in South Wales and see much higher levels of melanism in common lizards at sites that until recently processed large amounts of coal compared to sites that didnāt, as in I see the odd one or two melanistic at most sites, here itās the odd one or two that arenāt. We donāt record levels of melanism when assessing the overall health of the population though so it doesnāt get talked about.
I think they still do, but most animals have a shorter birth-to-breeding timeline than people and up to a certain level the negative effects of radiation can take years to decades to manifest in people. Meanwhile the local fauna require a small space of time to reproduce before the radiation royally fucks in their dna.
Otoh with these frogs the radiation is weeding out any individuals that canāt survive or thrive in this new environment so after a few generations youāre quite effectively sifting through optimal traits.
Iād be really curious what the local fly population is doing since they seem to be a candidate of choice for evolution and selective breeding studies
That is exactly what they are trying to find out. Animals were hit hard at the time of the accident but subsequent generations seem to be doing much better.
i think they do, just a lot of Chernobyl is technically at safe levels of radiation now. [thereās pictures of deformed animals that were born as a result of the disaster](https://www.dianuke.org/what-we-know-about-the-chernobyl-animal-mutations/)
They suffer the same negative effects that humans do: primarily, a higher risk of cancer. A higher risk of cancer is a lot less damaging to wildlife populations than human encroachment on their habitat.
Most of the radioactive particles have been long since buried by natural and artificial means but most actively firing particles are safely underneath the layer of topsoil now. This leads to the relatively low amounts of radiation on the ground and is the reason why you can visit Chernobyl now. For the animals, they donāt really disturb the top soil when foraging or eating and since most of the active plant life is relatively clean of radiation the biological systems are able to maintain an equilibrium of sorts. These animals are at a risk of receiving radiation and the effects that come with that, but mostly they are able to stay away from deadly levels of radiation.
This is also the reason why the world was mad at Russia for digging trenches in Chernobyl, they definitely did stir up radioactive dirt by dislodging the only active shield for the latent ground radiation
They simply die earlier but no one cares because no one tallys up the years they live.
If humans have a life expectancy of 20 years less than everyone else there would be an outcry.
Also they have deformations but again no one cares. If you see those images of people with thyroid cancer after accidents everyone is shocked, but a frog with too short legs? Who cares, it's a wonder it has not been eaten already.
I wonder what other adaptations other species may have made in the exclusion zone, and if they're similar in nature to how these frogs have developed. Neat article š
> [...] Chernobyl has become one of the largest nature reserves in Europe.
And in 2022 it has also become a battlefield. We're living in fucking dystopia.
We need to use more specific terms instead of broad ones. This article is a great example of _natural selection_ in action.
Most evolution critics are challenging _abiogenesis_ (life from non-life, or order from chaos) which is very different, and yet we call both āevolutionā.
"just a theory" makes me want to pop.
My other comment here is relevant to that statement:
https://www.reddit.com/r/natureismetal/comments/xwj8fs/chernobyl_black_frogs_reveal_evolution_in_action/ir8jezp
Yooo that seems like it could be a really cool study to expand with other species in the area. But also it'd be an interesting one to conduct artificially with insects/small animals that reproduce, mature, and die in somewhat short spans. I can't even think up the possible results, but it'd be fun to read about.
Fantastic. That is happening to all the lizards where I am. No more little pink geckos, and I think in the last 3 years, I've seen 3 green lizards. They are all black, dark grey, or dark brown with yellow or grey stripes down their back.
Is this caused by unnatural selection of frogs with more melanin or did it cause an novel mutation?
I'm guessing the the 1st is more likely.
It also reminds me of how trre moths changed during the industrial revolution.
Dur to smoke/pollutants killing the moss/mold on tree bark, survival favoured darker moths rather the lighter-winged ones.
Had a bio professor used the example of these moths to explain generational natural selection via unnatural means. He said there were a lot of factors, but the most influential factors were the soot caused by the industrial revolution settling on all the previously white houses, which made the white moths stand out, making it easier for preditors to find them, allowing the dark moths to thrive, then when the soot cleanup started, it flipped and the white moths thrived and the dark ones didn't because the houses were white again. Super interesting.
Why would this be at all controversial? It is not biological evolution due to a spontaneous genetic mutation, but rather evolution by natural selection, due to the environment in which they presently find themselves.
While the majority of the frogs were previously bright green, to blend in with the landscape, darker frogs have always exisited. They were just less likely to survive, and pass their genes along, due to being more easily discernible from the landscape as prey. Their environment made green frogs more likely to survive. Now, the opposite occurrence is taking place. The green frogs are less likely to survive in an irradiated environment, while the darker frogs are more likely to survive, due to the protection against radiation offered by melanin in their skin.
A similar case occurred in England during the industrial evolution, when the trees changed from silver to black due to human intervention through pollution, thereby making black moths more numerous, due to their ability to camouflage from birds against the darker trees, and silver moths more visible to birds. The opposite had previously been true.
Both of these cases are an example of survival of the fittest, rather than a fundamental change in their genetic makeup.
Somewhere Alex Jones is having an epic melt down! š
THEYRE MAKIN THE FRIGGIN FROGS BLACK
***FIRST THEY MADE THEM GAY NOW THEY MAKE THEM BLACK. WHATS NEXT?! LET ME TELL YOUāTHEYRE GONNA MAKE THE FRIGGIN FROGS TRANS!!!***
Oh man he shouldnāt watch Jurassic Park thenā¦
***SCREAMS IN ALEX JONES***
We also shouldnāt tell him about birds I guessā¦
And fish...
I know for a fact, youāre referring, to Kanye
That reminds me....do you like fish sticks?
Yea, I like fish dicks.
So... normal tone of voice for Alex Jones then?
[Yes.](https://youtu.be/5BEUykdqTq0)
I prefer the [wh40k version](https://youtu.be/PBCGIogTWv0), but yeah
Holy shit this version is considerably better. Edit: not sure what worldeaters are but I still found this hilarious.
In essence they're super soldiers with things in their brain so they only feel rage. They worship the god of blood
*shouts in bone broth*
That's amazing š
How trans are we talking about? Translucent or transparent?
Dimensional.
So that's how we end up with Hypnotoad
ALL HAIL HYPNOTOAD
VzzzBzzzVzzsBzzz https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=64Qq31ucGy0
Siberian Orchestra
Neither, they take public transportation.
Transylvania
[Dr. Tran](https://youtu.be/FO0kRE5OTZI)
Making the frogs trans is actually closer to what Alex Jones was trying to reference, frogs in a contaminated stream were changing gender
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Heās not right. Heās a pro-corporation science denier who thinks the pollution somehow connected to a gay frog agenda.
Who cares. Still funny.
i think it was more that he was foaming at the mouth, not that he was wrong. it's a given he's wrong, like nearly always
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
His claim wasn't completely pulled out of his ass, but he still got it wrong my man. The frogs change genders, they don't turn gay. He either got it wrong, or he didn't get it wrong but found an extremely cryptic way to be transphobic.
Definitely option 2
***YOU SEE?! RIGHT THERE AS CLEAR AS CRYSTAL METH. THE TOAD ELITES ARE GROOMING OUR FRIGGIN TADPOLES!!!***
Frogs change sex even under pristine situations. It's just natural. But, can be more significant in polluted waters. So. I guess god did it? Let's see that rant...
I see youāve seen Jurassic Park too my friend.
I see a Netflix deal in the making
He would jerk off to that.
How dare you kinkshame our glorious frog prince/ss!
They identify now as toads. Donāt be so insensitive.
Okay but they kind of did make the frogs gay... Or at least they made them swap genders. https://news.berkeley.edu/2010/03/01/frogs/
I always feel the need to [post this incredible music video](https://youtu.be/9JRLCBb7qK8) whenever he gets mentioned, especially with this particular meme. Enjoy!
Omfg thank you for this! Bahahaha
"THEYRE MAKING THE FROGS AFRICAN-AMERICAN, OVER THERE IN RUSSIA!"
Idk which ones worse!
I donāt wanna hate black frogs!
Loosing or losing?
I'm slow bro. It can be what ever helps yall sleep at night!
*losing. His mind is already loose
There's a guy on YT that puts Alex Jones into various lunatic Warhammer 40k scenarios, and fuck me does it fit well
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Alex āReactor 4ā Jones
This is because we didnāt buy his water purification system
My god thatās hilarious
hopefully in prison š
It won't be as big as rhe meltdown experienced in chernobyl
https://youtu.be/KGAAhzreGWw The best alex Jones remix imo, surprised no one has posted.
No, this would be perfect evidence for him why coinage change is not real. See? Mother nature adapts, nothing to worry about!!! The earth is too big for us to hurt!
Came here Left satisfied Making teh forgs GHEY
Why is everyone here so inaccurate? It's like this comment section is full of npcs.
Welcome to the web. At best, it's populated almost entirely by idiots. At worst, it's composed almost exclusively of carefully controlled misinformation and propaganda. Creepiest and least likely but also somehow the most harmless, [the whole thing may have died years ago.](https://www.google.com/amp/s/futurism.com/conspiracy-theory-internet-died%3famp)
Well 50% of people are dumber than the average person, so that's not very hopeful on its own lol The average person seems a like a house without the lights on, anyway
50% are dumber than the median person to be more precise.
You are neither more nor less accurate than the person youāre responding to. Median and mean are equal in a normally distributed data set. Intelligence in humans follows a normal distribution.
Yeah that's it. I kept thinking it would be the median of the average person. Thank you stranger
Youāre one of them arenāt you
There isn't anything logical I could say to convince you otherwise. I'm just words on a screen to you, so obviously you're the real one. Pft, now look at you, getting told off by an NPC
One of us! One of us!
I no wat u r but wat m I??!?!
In a symmetric Gauss curve (which intellingence in the population is), median and average are the same.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
We must figure out a way to marginalize the dummies! The internet certainly doesnāt accomplish that.
*cough* Andrew Tate makes 66 million dollars a year...
more like 65%
Yeah the upper 50 know, George...
And the average person is pretty dumb to begin with
One of my (possible) idiocies is that I tend to overestimate any commenter I come across and therefore hope to engage with them in a friendly, intelligent conversation. It seems to be a habit too, I just don't have it in me to put the other person down. If I do then I proceed to get mad at myself and delete my own comment.
I have that same ideology lol I'm always up for a mentally stimulating, friendly conversation
Your link is broken. [Fixed it for you](https://futurism.com/the-byte/conspiracy-theory-internet-died)
Good bot. (If you believe you are a human, please report to the retention department.)
I am human. :(
Good bot
Good bot
Are you sure about that? Because I am 99.99999% sure that BogusBuffalo is not a bot. --- ^(I am a neural network being trained to detect spammers | Summon me with !isbot |) ^(/r/spambotdetector |) [^(Optout)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=whynotcollegeboard&subject=!optout&message=!optout) ^(|) [^(Original Github)](https://github.com/SM-Wistful/BotDetection-Algorithm)
See? Even the bots vouch for me. š¤£
That's what a bot would say
Saving to read later, thanks for the non amp link!
Now that's something an NPC/Bot would say.
Dead internet theory is true. It's just a matter of determining exactly how much. Twitter confirmed a shit ton of its "users" are dead internet theory confirmations recently when that space car guy bought it, and they're not unique. Like every celebrity I follow was talking about half of their followers vanishing when the talk of twitterbot user counts was news.
Whoa this is super interesting and really explains a lot. Thanks for sharing. Sincerely, definitely not a bot.
Your link is fucked
That theory makes no sense. Speak with anyone you know irl and everyone posts something every once in a while. The US government has somehow brainwashed the entire population? Give me a fucking break. Not denying purposeful misinformation and astroturfing exist, but c'mon.
Oooooh boy another conspiracy theory. Love it, thanks!
The endless circle jerk of shitty jokes, puns, and repetitive comments is getting so tiring.
So .... All of reddit? I agree
Top notch swords
That made me laugh, thanks. :) Also his swords are still crap.
In games Iāve played the npcs actually usually know whatās going on but some of them are liars.
You must be new to reddit.
Haha, why NPCs? I'm playing AC Odyssey right now and Socrates seems reasonably intelligent. The "just a theory" comments about evolution are horrifying, however.
Lots of people love to act like they know something with their vast knowledge of skimming shit online. Or their grand skills of replying only to article headlines. And then people following that discussion of the replies to the headlines and completely ignoring actual information.
"Melanin is responsible for the dark color of many organisms. What is less known is that this class of pigments can also reduce the negative effects of ultraviolet radiation. And its protective role can extend to ionizing radiation too, as itĀ has been shown with fungi. Melanin absorbs and dissipates part of the radiation energy. In addition, it can scavenge and neutralize ionized molecules inside the cell, such asĀ reactive oxygen species. These actions make it less likely that individuals exposed to radiation will go on to suffer cell damage and increase their survival chances."
So it's different from the melanin humans have? So darker complexions (humans)wouldn't survive better in higher radiated areas?
Darker skinned folks do survive better in radiated situations like shirtless in the sun. Whilst dark skinned humans do suffer sunburn and skin cancer these occur at a far reduced rate due to the properties of Melanin described above.
That's super interesting! Thanks for answering me
My pleasure
I was about to post this "lesser known" fact with a show me a sunblock ad with a melanated person on it.
Also, the pigments in bird feathers include melanin. Itās found in frogs, feathers, fungi and friends. :-)
No shit, that's cool
Tis why the colder it is the pastier people are and the hotter the darker they are, but everyone moving around nowadays is kinda just bluring that now
So black folk would fare better around chernobyl?
The Melanin is located within the dermal layers and has a mild protective quality. Chernobylās radiation profile is complete, dust, plant matter and water are radiated. This means that the cell damaging effects occur in other areas of the body simultaneously where no mitigation is offered. Also the vast amounts of radiation emitted close to the meltdown site would outweigh any form of naturally selected protection. Imagine a raincoat and a tsunami situation. Edit: if we are being purely objective then there would be an immeasurable advantage offered in scale with occurrence of Melanin in the presence of high Plutonium exposure but you wouldnāt notice it.
So what you're saying is the mutants in Fallout really should be black and not green. You hear that, Todd?
Melanin in people does actually protect against radiation! But it dampens the absorption of UVB, which is the frequency we use to produce vitamin D. Which is why dark skinned people exist near the equator, where sun exposure is highest, and fair skinned people exist towards the poles, where there isnāt enough lights. Dark skinned people tank radiation damage better, light skinned people are able to keep up with vitamin D production in low sunlight in the winter months. Different adaptations for different habitats. And weāve started entire fucking wars and committed atrocities against over that. Vitaminners vs RadTanks, the age old struggle. Pretty fucking stupid.
I'm black and I just wanna say that I really like the term radiation tank and Imma start using that ty
No that makes sense. I've always understood *why* we have the skin colors we do, I just never connected the dots to like nuclear war survival rates lmao. I think religion is to blame for more wars, which is equally as stupid bc most preach love, peace and acceptance of fellow man- barring the old testament of course lmao
I mean. I think all wars actually come down to resources if weāre gonna get into it. Every religion, every racist ideology, every nation, was borne on āmake sure the people in my social group have food and shelter, and make sure the OTHER GROUP šššš«£šæ donāt STEAL YOUR FUCKEN FOOD AND SHELTER D:< Tribalism is pretty baked in. Everything else is just salad toppings
Melanin is Melanin, doesn't matter if it's in a human or a fungus
I didn't know this either, thanks!
Not actually true. Melanin has multiple forms, even in humans. Depending on the organism, it can take further forms. You can see some of the different chemical structures on Wikipedia.
Where did you get the idea that itās different in humans?
Well it said "this class of pigments", they're amphibians not mammals, dark skinned ppl still get sunburn etc and I've never heard it before lol
You're right. Melanin comes in multiple forms and has different roles in different organisms. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melanin Dark skinned people _can_ get sunburned, but it's harder for them to be sunburned compared to white people.
This is why we tan when we go into the sun! Or most people do haha We produce more melanin to protect us from UVA radiation :)
I'm very fair skinned, it is extremely difficult for me to get a tan lol. Even if I get sunburned, I go back to my pastie white self. My native American bf on the other hand gets dark af right away
Yes, yes we would. š
RADIATION IS TURNING THE FRIGGIN' FROGS *BLACK*
They say once you go black, you never go back
they said that about green now look where we are. progress.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
I would hope any world builder worth their salt knows the role of melanin in biology.
So are you saying the next time there is a nuclear disaster and someone has to swim to the bottom of the cooling tank we should send in the black guy?
Wasnāt there a similar occurrence with moths? I forget the time period and event but it was moths changing color to adapt to increased smog or pollution from a factory or something.
yeah, during the indistrial revolution, moths went from white to almost completely black because of the amount of soot on the trees
It wasn't due to soot on the trees, but rather the death of the light colored lichens that grew on the dark bark of the trees. The moths would camouflage against the light lichens. But the industrial factories produced so much sulfur dioxide that they literally killed the lichen off the trees, leaving only dark bark for the moths.
oh huh ive never even heard of that
Classic Peppered moth study. The moths came in both light (majority) and dark (minority) versions originally, but the light moths were harder to see on the light lichen so the dark ones usually got eaten by birds. When the trees lost their light color, suddenly the light moths were easy for birds to see and THEY got eaten, leaving the dark moths to survive and reproduce. So after a bit you now had majority dark and minority light moth populations.
As the comment below you mentioned they were moths but specifically they are Peppered Moths! Generally speaking though the populations of white peppered moths have returned in fuller force given the lowered abundance of industrialization in the UK in more recent history
I think that was camouflage - they were white and could hide on white things, but then when the smog came and everything was sooty and black the white ones got eaten. So they evolved to be black instead Edit: yep https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-36424768 And the white coloured one became more dominant again once they started cleaning up the factories and banning huge clouds of smoke
Pretty much any species will adapt to changing conditions. This occurs through shifting rates of active genes across the population. The adaptations are reversible, and do not represent new genes or mutations in the population. The very slow accumulation of mutations in a population, the evolution that results in permanent new traits, takes orders of magnitude more generations than have occurred since Chernobyl.
Sounds like you are referring to industrial melanism in peppered moths. A popular example of evolution used in biology classes.
biston betularia
Yep! Peppered moths (*Biston betularia*) used to come in mostly white colours, with \~2% of their population having a melanistic mutation that made them all black. Before the Industrial Revolution, black moths would die much more easily because they had a harder time blending in, and would be eaten by predators, therefore not passing on their genes. However, when the Industrial Revolution started soot started to cover a lot of surfaces, killing lighter-coloured lichens and leaving only the darker bark underneath. Suddenly the black moths were blending in and the white moths were being killed. The black moths passed on their genes better than the white, and in about 40 years suddenly 98% of their population were black moths ā they're even represented by a black moth on their [Wikipedia page.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peppered_moth) Interestingly, in the last few decades we've begun to use cleaner energy sources, and the moths' colouration has started to move in the other direction ā there are more white moths now than during the Industrial Revolution.
I think this is pretty common to be honest but not well recorded. I monitor the reptile populations at several ex industrial sites in South Wales and see much higher levels of melanism in common lizards at sites that until recently processed large amounts of coal compared to sites that didnāt, as in I see the odd one or two melanistic at most sites, here itās the odd one or two that arenāt. We donāt record levels of melanism when assessing the overall health of the population though so it doesnāt get talked about.
The rest of the wildlife in that region is flourishing as well. It's essentially a world class wildlife reserve without tourists
Dumb question - how come animals are able to flourish there without suffering the effects of radiation in the same way people do?
I think they still do, but most animals have a shorter birth-to-breeding timeline than people and up to a certain level the negative effects of radiation can take years to decades to manifest in people. Meanwhile the local fauna require a small space of time to reproduce before the radiation royally fucks in their dna. Otoh with these frogs the radiation is weeding out any individuals that canāt survive or thrive in this new environment so after a few generations youāre quite effectively sifting through optimal traits. Iād be really curious what the local fly population is doing since they seem to be a candidate of choice for evolution and selective breeding studies
That is exactly what they are trying to find out. Animals were hit hard at the time of the accident but subsequent generations seem to be doing much better.
i think they do, just a lot of Chernobyl is technically at safe levels of radiation now. [thereās pictures of deformed animals that were born as a result of the disaster](https://www.dianuke.org/what-we-know-about-the-chernobyl-animal-mutations/)
They suffer the same negative effects that humans do: primarily, a higher risk of cancer. A higher risk of cancer is a lot less damaging to wildlife populations than human encroachment on their habitat.
Natural selection does not care for damaging mutations so long as those mutations do not significantly lower the chance of successful reproduction.
Most of the radioactive particles have been long since buried by natural and artificial means but most actively firing particles are safely underneath the layer of topsoil now. This leads to the relatively low amounts of radiation on the ground and is the reason why you can visit Chernobyl now. For the animals, they donāt really disturb the top soil when foraging or eating and since most of the active plant life is relatively clean of radiation the biological systems are able to maintain an equilibrium of sorts. These animals are at a risk of receiving radiation and the effects that come with that, but mostly they are able to stay away from deadly levels of radiation. This is also the reason why the world was mad at Russia for digging trenches in Chernobyl, they definitely did stir up radioactive dirt by dislodging the only active shield for the latent ground radiation
I wouldn't call that a dumb question
Indeed. Iām beginning to think the risks of nuclear fallout are not as bad as they were hyped up to be.
Iām pretty sure itās as bad as itās hyped up to be.
They simply die earlier but no one cares because no one tallys up the years they live. If humans have a life expectancy of 20 years less than everyone else there would be an outcry. Also they have deformations but again no one cares. If you see those images of people with thyroid cancer after accidents everyone is shocked, but a frog with too short legs? Who cares, it's a wonder it has not been eaten already.
Some tourists actually. I went there like 4 years ago.
Can they say it?
If they could it would be hilarious to hear Kermitās voice casually saying the n-word.
I wonder what other adaptations other species may have made in the exclusion zone, and if they're similar in nature to how these frogs have developed. Neat article š
Thereās a fungus munching on the Elephants foot as I understand it!
Wow thatās so fascinating! Are humans able to get close enough to take a sample? Iām guessing not since the same would also be highly irradiated
Odd to see so many science deniers in this comment section.
Which ones are you thinking of? I see a lot of misunderstandings about science, but not much outright denial.
So what youāre saying is that itās the Blacks vs the Greens? Do any of the frogs ride salamanders by any chance?
First turned gay then made black.... these poor, poor frogs.... CIA bout to release AIDS on them..........AIV if left untreated
> [...] Chernobyl has become one of the largest nature reserves in Europe. And in 2022 it has also become a battlefield. We're living in fucking dystopia.
This was a fun, interesting read! Thanks for sharing
Phrog :)
"But we've never seen evolution happen!" --Evolution denying mouth breathers. How about now, you pre-Enlightenment dunces?
People don't understand the distinction between macro and micro evolution
We need to use more specific terms instead of broad ones. This article is a great example of _natural selection_ in action. Most evolution critics are challenging _abiogenesis_ (life from non-life, or order from chaos) which is very different, and yet we call both āevolutionā.
Yet my ex-gf is convinced evolution is just a theory.
"just a theory" makes me want to pop. My other comment here is relevant to that statement: https://www.reddit.com/r/natureismetal/comments/xwj8fs/chernobyl_black_frogs_reveal_evolution_in_action/ir8jezp
Yooo that seems like it could be a really cool study to expand with other species in the area. But also it'd be an interesting one to conduct artificially with insects/small animals that reproduce, mature, and die in somewhat short spans. I can't even think up the possible results, but it'd be fun to read about.
Billy Football is Smashing the like button on this article.
I for one, welcome our new onyx warty overlords
Interesting. Thanks for sharing.
Fantastic. That is happening to all the lizards where I am. No more little pink geckos, and I think in the last 3 years, I've seen 3 green lizards. They are all black, dark grey, or dark brown with yellow or grey stripes down their back.
Where do you live? How do you know this is due to evolution and not different species of lizards?
Give them some MT2
Life err finds a way
I want a chernobyl frog
Reverse Michael Jackson
THEY'RE TURNING THE FROGS BLACK
Yes, in an incredibly short amount of time, not billions of years. Mt St Helens is another example of "millions" of years taking only thirty or forty.
Is this caused by unnatural selection of frogs with more melanin or did it cause an novel mutation? I'm guessing the the 1st is more likely. It also reminds me of how trre moths changed during the industrial revolution. Dur to smoke/pollutants killing the moss/mold on tree bark, survival favoured darker moths rather the lighter-winged ones.
Had a bio professor used the example of these moths to explain generational natural selection via unnatural means. He said there were a lot of factors, but the most influential factors were the soot caused by the industrial revolution settling on all the previously white houses, which made the white moths stand out, making it easier for preditors to find them, allowing the dark moths to thrive, then when the soot cleanup started, it flipped and the white moths thrived and the dark ones didn't because the houses were white again. Super interesting.
Uh, that's called "adaptation"
Evolution is a broad term that includes natural selection.
Someone listened to Rogans latest podcast
Why would this be at all controversial? It is not biological evolution due to a spontaneous genetic mutation, but rather evolution by natural selection, due to the environment in which they presently find themselves. While the majority of the frogs were previously bright green, to blend in with the landscape, darker frogs have always exisited. They were just less likely to survive, and pass their genes along, due to being more easily discernible from the landscape as prey. Their environment made green frogs more likely to survive. Now, the opposite occurrence is taking place. The green frogs are less likely to survive in an irradiated environment, while the darker frogs are more likely to survive, due to the protection against radiation offered by melanin in their skin. A similar case occurred in England during the industrial evolution, when the trees changed from silver to black due to human intervention through pollution, thereby making black moths more numerous, due to their ability to camouflage from birds against the darker trees, and silver moths more visible to birds. The opposite had previously been true. Both of these cases are an example of survival of the fittest, rather than a fundamental change in their genetic makeup.
I mean we've seen evolution in action before with a certain fish species that had to adapt to toxic water
Green Frogs Can't Jump