Black swan blindness

Biological Parallel

The dodo evolved on Mauritius without predators for millions of years—island-biogeography created a naive prey species with no template for rats or humans. When invasive-species arrived, mass-extinction followed within 80 years. Tasmanian devils now face a similar black swan: transmissible facial cancer spreading through their population—an evolutionary-trap no prior selection prepared them for. Christmas Island crabs survived for millennia until yellow crazy ants arrived in the 1990s, killing 15-20 million crabs. Black swan blindness emerges from optimization for experienced threats: natural selection shapes responses to historical pressures, not theoretical ones. When environments are stable for epochs, adaptation to rare catastrophes is selected against. History blinds to the unprecedented.