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Posted by Muzzy on April 05, 19101 at 13:07:29:

Squirrels are evolving in New York City.

At Riverside Park on the West Side of Manhattan there are cinnamon colored squirrels. At Grammarcy Park and several other parks around the city you'll find black and dark brown squirrels. But these aren't new species but rather variants of the eastern gray squirrel.

According to Robert S. Voss, curator of mammalogy at the American Museum of Natural History, cinnamon and black coloration genes exist in the eastern gray squirrel population, in fact, in all squirrel populations. Through in-breeding, these recessive traits have come out. City parks form islands, because the streets, sidewalks and buildings of New York are too inhospitable to the squirrels to permit them to mix with squirrels elsewhere in the city. Plus, the urban environment has eliminated almost all squirrel predators. Cinnamon and black colored squirrels are usually at a disadvantage because they stand out against gray tree trunks and so are easier targets for predators. But with the predators eliminated the variant colored squirrels are able to survive.

Follow Ups:

• Re: Hehe, you guys will call anything evolution. Bessel's Equation 07:13:52 4/06/101 (7)
  • Re: Hehe, you guys will call anything evolution. Carolina Garcia 23:16:03 2/19/103 (0)
  • and some guys will fib Texrat 17:42:12 4/06/101 (4)
    • why don't you try reading it again? Bessel's Equation 21:57:34 4/06/101 (3)
      • Because I don't need to Texrat 12:09:19 4/20/101 (1)
        • Re: Because I don't need to Muzzy 14:47:00 4/21/101 (0)
      • Hey, Bessel! Gonna tell me where Darwin conflates evolution and abiogenesis in The Origin of Species? Chatterbox 20:48:54 4/14/101 (0)
  • This reminds me of the pepper moths and Darwin's observations about island evolution Muzzy 08:52:29 4/06/101 (0)

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