Introducing the Evolutionary Resilience Issue

Biologists quarrel readily over how exactly the diversity of the planet’s species came to pass. The dominant version of evolution posits that species adapt by way of random genetic mutations and that the changes best suited to a species’s environment tend to win out (you know, like giraffes with long necks). What’s at issue for most tenured, PhD-holding scientists isn’t whether this happened, but at what rate.

Does the process of natural selection move in a constant, gradual flux? Do environmental changes result in species morphing into different shapes, altering their physiological processes, steadily over the course of hundreds of generations?

Some scientists think not and advocate something called “punctuated equilibrium,” a theory in evolutionary biology that argues that species will try as hard as fucking possible to stay the same for as long as possible, and that despite changing environments, new threats, and new realities, organisms will hew to STASIS. But then at rare and rapid moments in history, a species will change quickly over the course of a few generations, resulting in unpredictable and almost phantasmagorical shapes and colors of the animals and plants and insects and all the things that crawl our desolate wasteland of a planet.

With that seemingly obscure biological debate in mind, we present the March edition of VICE magazine, which we lovingly call the Evolutionary Resilience Issue. Here’s a glimpse at what’s inside:

Neil Winokur shot our cover and gave us an exclusive still-life photo series of all the things that represent New York.

We also got an excerpt from Family Life, Akhil Sharma’s second novel, which is based on something that actually happened to Sharma’s family.

Christopher Ketchum went undercover to the Idaho Coyote and Wolf Derby and wrote about the hunting that takes place. 

Speaking of illegal—Rachael Ferguson wrote an in-depth piece on the illegal betting world in her story “The Wide World of Bookies.”

We know the print magazine lasts about 30 whole seconds at boutiques and stores before it sells out, so why aren’t you subscribed already? Do that right now right here. Got an iPad, fancy pants? Even better—download our FREE app, because then you get a whole bunch of extra stuff like extended interviews, more pictures, and all that jazz.