WAIT WHAT??? EVOLUTION OCCURS IN DECADES NOT MILLENIA?! British birds evolve bigger beaks to use garden feeders...?!

Okay, I'm really confused now..

(This topic was initially posted by Face Palmer, but I wanna repost it with some questions of my own...)

According to a recent report published in the US journal 'Science,' the reason some birds in Britain have evolved bigger beaks over the past 40 years may be down to the country’s enthusiasm for feeding them in their gardens.

Researchers compared beak length among great tits in Britain and the Netherlands, where bird feeders are less common.

“Between the 1970s and the present day, beak length has got longer among the British birds. That’s a really short time period in which to see this sort of difference emerging,” said study co-author Jon Slate, professor in the department of animal and plant sciences at the University of Sheffield.

“We now know that this increase in beak length, and the difference in beak length between birds in Britain and mainland Europe, is down to genes that have evolved by natural selection.”

[link to www.theguardian.com (secure)]





Wow...

So we are now being told that evolution does not take MILLENIA but occurs just over a few DECADES ???

Doesn't make one bit of sense to me...

* Why haven't White Australians, who have been living in Australia since the 1700s, not developed brown skin colour or curly hair...?

* Why haven't European Africans (ie those here since the 1940s and earlier) not developed a much lighter skin tone...?

* Why haven't gorillas, living in cages and constantly interacting with humans over the past 200 years, not evolved vocal chords just to at least say a few useful words like "food" or "drink"

... the list is more or less endless...

None of it makes sense to me. Or maybe evolution occurs faster in some species than it does in others...?