City Mouse and Country Mouse. By Arthur Rackham. Via Wikipedia http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rackham_town_mouse_and_country_mouse.jpg

The Evolution of the Country Mouse and the City Mouse

Many people today still struggle with the idea that evolution could be occurring right now.  In front of us.  This is a really good place to start our understanding of evolution with a current, modern example!  Darwin thought that the environment was what shaped us, what made species different from each other and unique.  The environment in the city is certainly different than in the country, even for people!  Have you ever gone cow-tipping?  Do you even know what that is?  Musical preferences, food and shopping habits, even dialects vary between country life and city life.  It’s not surprising that mice do, too; city mice have to deal with different threats (traffic, pollution, subways, humans with poison and traps) than country mice (weather, predators, foraging for food).  But are these differences enough to drive evolution?  That’s a harder question to answer.

What the researchers found seems to indicate that maybe the mice in the city really are becoming different–even down to a genetic level.  The article suggested that some of the differences had to do with immunity to pathogens, which makes sense.  Is it enough for them to become a separate species?  That part was less clear.

I’ll delve into this in more detail with a full review!