Mammals Shrink at Faster Rates than They Grow (image)

University of Calgary

Caption

Transformations can happen much faster in animals that live in the water. An increase from rabbit-sized to elephant-sized would take at least five million generations, but the equivalent change in whales takes half as many generations. Becoming smaller is also easier: dwarfing in elephants occurred 10 times faster than the equivalent increase to evolve large elephants.

Credit

Image courtesy of Alistair Evans, David Jones and co-authors of the PNAS paper: The maximum rate of mammal evolution.

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