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posted by mrpg on Wednesday August 08 2018, @03:00AM   Printer-friendly
from the human−− dept.

Submitted via IRC for takyon

Living on an island can have strange effects. On Cyprus, hippos dwindled to the size of sea lions. On Flores in Indonesia, extinct elephants weighed no more than a large hog, but rats grew as big as cats. All are examples of the so-called island effect, which holds that when food and predators are scarce, big animals shrink and little ones grow. But no one was sure whether the same rule explains the most famous example of dwarfing on Flores, the odd extinct hominin called the hobbit, which lived 60,000 to 100,000 years ago and stood about a meter tall.

Now, genetic evidence from modern pygmies on Flores—who are unrelated to the hobbit—confirms that humans, too, are subject to so-called island dwarfing. An international team reports this week in Science that Flores pygmies differ from their closest relatives on New Guinea and in East Asia in carrying more gene variants that promote short stature. The genetic differences testify to recent evolution—the island rule at work. And they imply that the same force gave the hobbit its short stature, the authors say.

Source: http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/08/island-living-can-shrink-humans


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  • (Score: 4, Touché) by Mykl on Wednesday August 08 2018, @04:23AM (10 children)

    by Mykl (1112) on Wednesday August 08 2018, @04:23AM (#718645)

    ...Tongans, Maoris and several other Pacific Island races tend to be larger than average.

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  • (Score: 2) by coolgopher on Wednesday August 08 2018, @04:56AM (1 child)

    by coolgopher (1157) on Wednesday August 08 2018, @04:56AM (#718658)

    Yeah I was going to say - did you start with the pygmies here and have them grow? :)

    • (Score: 3, Funny) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday August 09 2018, @12:11AM

      by PartTimeZombie (4827) on Thursday August 09 2018, @12:11AM (#719132)

      I'm not sure what they do in the Islands, but where I live we grow 'em.

      You get a bunch of little Islanders and throw a rugby ball to them.

      Just a few years later, they're all 110 kilos and can run like the wind.

      You then select 15 of the biggest ones, put a black jersey on them [wikipedia.org] and you're good to go.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 08 2018, @04:58AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 08 2018, @04:58AM (#718661)

    ...Tongans, Maoris and several other Pacific Island races tend to be larger than average.

    What in the "big animals shrink and little ones grow" you fail to understand?

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by captain normal on Wednesday August 08 2018, @05:18AM (1 child)

    by captain normal (2205) on Wednesday August 08 2018, @05:18AM (#718667)

    Yeah...I was going to say the same about Samoans and Hawaiians. Wonder how the theory fits them.

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    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 10 2018, @06:07AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 10 2018, @06:07AM (#719818)

      It's a little tight around the chest.

  • (Score: 2) by qzm on Wednesday August 08 2018, @10:01AM

    by qzm (3260) on Wednesday August 08 2018, @10:01AM (#718719)

    Exactly, this 'research' seems to be based on a very few specific cases.. sigh.

    (limited) correlation is not causation, people!

    Or is france suddenly an island, but only if you are male?

  • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Wednesday August 08 2018, @05:32PM (3 children)

    by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday August 08 2018, @05:32PM (#718872) Journal

    I was going to say Polynesians...though I was really thinking only of Hawaiians. (And actually, just the Royal line, as those are the only ones I've seen pictures of.)

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    • (Score: 2) by Reziac on Thursday August 09 2018, @07:31AM (2 children)

      by Reziac (2489) on Thursday August 09 2018, @07:31AM (#719284) Homepage

      A number of NFL players are Polynesian (Samoan, Tongan, etc). BIG suckers. Can only think of one who wasn't the size of a moose.

      I'm thinkin' there's another factor at work, maybe you get pygmies when protein and fat sources are sub-par. Might be a better correlation with absence-of-pigs than with islands.

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      • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Thursday August 09 2018, @05:40PM (1 child)

        by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Thursday August 09 2018, @05:40PM (#719494) Journal

        Sorry, that doesn't work. Pygmy elephants didn't shrink in size because of "not enough meat", and historically the Polynesians were short on meat protein. It's probably more correlated with them spending a lot of time in the ocean at below body temperature. That would also explain the thicker layer of subcutaneous fat that they tend to have.

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        • (Score: 2) by Reziac on Thursday August 09 2018, @06:47PM

          by Reziac (2489) on Thursday August 09 2018, @06:47PM (#719536) Homepage

          Doesn't explain the small size of many aquatic animals, tho...

          Fact is there's probably a ton of factors and teasing out which ones applied at some point in the past ... well, at best we wind up with spotty generalizations, which may all be incorrect, or only apply when unknown factor X is present, etc.

          But for big herbivores like hippos and elephants -- probably it's just selection (for lower food requirements, given these large herbivores tend to eat themselves out of house and home) accelerated by inbreeding. Small size tends to be recessive, so once a closed gene pool has the small trait set, you generally don't get larger again (barring a new mutation).

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