How the Elephant Got His Trunk (Picture Books)

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The crocodile winked one eye as the elephant’s child came closer. He put his head down close to the crocodile’s musky, tusky mouth and the crocodile caught him by his little nose and said between his teeth “I think today I will begin with an elephant’s child”. On this account, there is no easy route from a tapir-like trunk to an elephant’s trunk: the evolutionary path leading to elephant trunks was shaped by a distinct set of selective pressures that required not only specific starting conditions to get off the ground, but also further events downstream. By this hypothesis, both specific proto-elephant traits and a semi- or fully-aquatic environment, along with the later co-option of these traits in a terrestrial niche, were required to evolve the highly plastic, multi-purpose organ. If this latter account is right, then although one might class both elephants and other mammals together, one nonetheless cannot use tapirs (or other large ungulates) as models for the elephant’s evolution, nor can one take the elephant as the extreme end of an evolutionary trajectory that tapirs are potentially traversing. This is because, on this account, trunks are the outcome of a path-dependent cascade. Trunk evolution was dependent on multiple events: elephants having particular morphology, being located in (semi-) aquatic environments and so on.

Interestingly, we think understanding uniqueness attributions as being about traits allows one to understand similar claims made in terms of lineages, events, or processes; a lineage is unique just in case it possesses a unique trait ( mutatis mutandis for events and processes). Consider polyploidy—whole genome duplication—in plants. Polyploidy can occur via a number of routes but tends to bring a common syndrome of effects: plants tend to grow more slowly, produce larger seeds, flower later and live longer. Among angiosperms, there are also often exaggerated changes to the size and shape of reproductive organs as well as increased production of alkaloid chemicals—shifting the relationship between plants and their pollinators and pests (Levin 1983). The effects of polyploidization can be dramatic, should one therefore treat them as unique?In this paper, we provide an analysis of uniqueness; one that sheds light on the nature and role of uniqueness attributions in the life sciences. Though there are metaphysical issues in the neighborhood, we focus on the epistemological implications of uniqueness attributions. More specifically, our attention focuses on unique trait attributions. Unique traits are non-recurrent and as such, limit researcher abilities to acquire evidence, test hypotheses and provide explanations concerning them. Uniqueness has received little attention in recent philosophy of science. This is surprising given its important role in the life sciences. There it is often claimed that events, traits, or lineages are unique; for example, that evolutionary events are contingent (McConwell 2019, Currie 2018), irreversible (Maynard-Smith & Szathmary, 1995) or idiosyncratic (Wong 2019); that human beings evolve under unique cultural circumstances (Henrich 2015); and that lineages bear unique, novel traits (Wagner 2014). The metaphysics of evolutionary kinds further suggests an important role for uniqueness. The dominant view understands such kinds as individuals: particular trajectories deserving of narrative explanation (Hull 1976).

Boyd R, Richerson PJ (1985) Culture and the Evolutionary Process. University of Chicago Press, Chicago Thornton A (2008) Variation in contributions to teaching by meerkats. Proceedings Royal Soc b: Biol Sci 275(1644):1745–1751 researchers are tempted] to pose and try to answer, tempting but unrealistic research questions. There is much we would like to know about human evolutionary history, but wanting to know something does not make it knowable ( ibid, 677).

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Elephants have an incredible sense of smell, able to detect food that is several miles away. Their nostrils are located at the tip of their trunk and contain more smell receptors than any other mammal – including dogs. 🐘 Communication Pearce T (2012) Convergence and parallelism in evolution: A Neo-Gouldian account. Br J Philos Sci 63:429–448

H. W. Boynton, writing in The Atlantic in 1903, commented that only a century earlier children had had to be content with the Bible, Pilgrim's Progress, Paradise Lost, and Foxe's Book of Martyrs, but in his day "a much pleasanter bill of fare is being provided for them". Boynton argued that with Just So Stories, Kipling did for "very little children" what The Jungle Book had done for older ones. He described the book as "artfully artless, in its themes, in its repetitions, in its habitual limitation, and occasional abeyance, of adult humor. It strikes a child as the kind of yarn his father or uncle might have spun if he had just happened to think of it; and it has, like all good fairy-business, a sound core of philosophy". [12] Modern [ edit ] John Lee described the book as a classic work of children's literature. [13] Sue Walsh observed in 2007 that critics have rigidly categorised Just So Stories as "Children's Literature", and have in consequence given it scant literary attention. In her view, if critics mention the book at all, they talk about what kind of reading is good for children and what they are capable of understanding. The stories are discussed, she argues, by critics such as Elliott Gose "in terms of ideas about the child's pleasure (conceived of in sensual terms divorced of intellectual understanding) in the oral aspects of the text which are said to prompt an 'active Participation' which seems largely to be understood in terms of the 'oral savouring' of repetition". [14] Evolutionary developmental biology [ edit ] Then that bad Elephant’s Child spanked all his dear families for a long time, till they were very warm and greatly astonished. He pulled out his tall Ostrich aunt’s tail-feathers; and he caught his tall uncle, the Giraffe, by the hind-leg, and dragged him through a thorn-bush; and he shouted at his broad aunt, the Hippopotamus, and blew bubbles into her ear when she was sleeping in the water after meals; but he never let any one touch Kolokolo Bird.Krause J, Fu Q, Good JM, Viola B, Shunkov MV, Derevianko AP, Pääbo S (2010) The complete mitochondrial DNA genome of an unknown hominin from southern Siberia. Nature 464(7290):894 The name Effie does not appear in the text of the stories, where the narrator now and again says O my Best Beloved to his listening child instead. Scuse me,’ said the Elephant’s Child, ‘but my nose is badly out of shape, and I am waiting for it to shrink. When researchers in the life sciences claim that a creature is unique, what do they mean? Though one might make such claims in terms of ‘events’, ‘processes’, or ‘lineages’, we will understand such claims to be about ‘trait’ uniqueness. To see why, consider a puzzle that arises when such claims are situated in the context of ‘lineages’. Scuse me,’ said the Elephant’s Child most politely, ‘but do you happen to have seen a Crocodile in these promiscuous parts?’

Brown P, Sutikna T, Morwood MJ, Soejono RP, Saptomo EW, Due RA (2004) A new small-bodied hominin from the Late Pleistocene of Flores. Indonesia Nature 431(7012):1055 The 2 battled for hours, and with every pull and tug, Elephant's nose stretched a little more.Eventually, Crocodile became too tired to pull any more, and let go of Elephant. Birch J (2021) Toolmaking and the Origin of Normative Cognition. Biol Philos. 36(4). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-020-09777-9Wagner GP (2014) Homology, genes, and evolutionary innovation. Princeton University Press, Princeton Best elephant gifts: 7 elephant-themed present ideas you can’t resist So how did the elephant get its trunk? Turner DD (2004) The past vs. the tiny: historical science and the abductive arguments for realism. Stud Hist Philos Sci Part A, 35(1), 1–17. Then the Elephant’s Child put his head down close to the Crocodile’s musky, tusky mouth, and the Crocodile caught him by his little nose, which up to that very week, day, hour, and minute, had been no bigger than a boot, though much more useful.