Much of the north-west side of the island where the conference was being held is dry-land, with exposed rock from several different ages of lava flows. I came across the bleached bones of pigs and other large animals among the lava, but rarely saw any sizable living creatures.
One day I was driving out to a nearby park to do some hiking and I saw a group of goats crossing the road. I lucked out and was able to capture a few photos like the one above. What immediately struck me about the goats was that they were colored just like many of the aged lava stones I had been seeing the previous few days. They didn't have any of the white markings so common on goats I've seen almost every where else.
It made me think the goats might have been under a pretty severe hunting pressure and that their colors represented adaptive camouflage, protecting them somewhat from visually-hunting humans. If the goats had been resting among the rocks as I drove by, I likely would have thought they too were just rocks.
Goat hunting on the Big Island is allowed year-round in some places, with defined seasons in other areas. There have been intense and largely successful goat eradication efforts in the larger fence-enclosed parks on the island. This represents a fairly high level of hunting pressure, which would definitely be expected to select for traits that help the animals avoid predation.
Unfortunately, I have been able to find no research on the topic of the evolution of wild goats of Hawai'i due to human hunting. This might be a nice topic for a PhD for some motivated student living on the island. Let me know if you come up with anything.
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