Undeterred by thundering traffic, this mistle thrush reached one of life’s crossroads, and decided to set up home in an urban red light district (Image: Nell Kimberley)
“IT’S the wild west of evolution and ecology,” says Joel Brown, an ecologist at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Evolution is operating with a vengeance in the urban environment as animals struggle to adapt to novel conditions and cope with “evolutionary illusions”.
An animal is said to be in an evolutionary illusion or trap when it does something it has evolved to do, but at the wrong time or in the wrong…
