A sad but vivid example of Darwinian selection (poor duck chicks)

I saw this picture in a talk by Eric T. Wang on "Accelerated Evolution in Recent Human History" / paper Global landscape of recent inferred Darwinian selection for Homo sapiens.
[I googled duck and ducklings after that, & here the pix was on google images of course]

Really memorable. "Bad parenting mother duck leads ducklings over drain".

From the web site, apparently in this particular case the ducklings were rescued. However, the talk was on natural selection - the Darwinian type of selection. The picture really brings home the importance of changes in the environment and their effect on selection and what the spiecies might be "selected" for.

P.S. This site seems to have a video of probably the same event, but I can't easily see it here right now http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5139410/.

[Technorati: Darwin, evolution]

Google and Biology / Genetics

Interesting:

Google turns its search power to the hunt for genetic drugs

Here is actually a longer version of the excerpt on which this was based:
The Google Story: An Excerpt, Chapter 26: Googling Your Genes

The above is from November 2005. This is a newer report, says as is the title ;)
Google and Venter Mum on Collaboration Reports

[Technorati: Google and biology, genetic drugs]