So everyone has most likely heard of evolution, but who the heck has ever heard of a reverse evolution event? This exact event is occurring in the malagasy songbird. It shows a rare event where a species of bird that evolved into several separate species are suddenly reverting back towards a parent species. Generally, this is thought to occur because of human influence (destruction of habitat).
A team lead by Nicholas Block from Stonehill College discovered this by analyzing the DNA of muscle and feathers from over 117 of the songbirds This showed a variation in their mtDNA of up to 7.6% which is a very large amount for animals within the same species. To compare, human variation, from anywhere on the planet, only varies by about 1.5%. Despite having separate ancestors, the separate species are coming back towards being one species. Being that this is a rare event, it shows that, although very unusual in nature, very unusual events do occur in nature.
