one night it was really late and i was reading on wikipedia about a certain type of monkey thingie that is polyamourous and that the women sleep with many of the bros in their neigh-hood so that the bro monkeys take equal responsibility raising the babies because they can’t be sure which genes are theirs.
and its thought that it also prevents fighting among male bro monkeys and they cant be sure which babies to kill because they dont know if it is theirs.
but socio-biology is weird.
because it is also said that human bros spread their seed as much as possible and that this is their natural inclination.
but how can this possibly account for all the wars men have started? how can they be sure they’re not killing their own with their spread-the-seed mentality?
just a bit confused is all.
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The mainstream of evolutionary biology bases itself on the same assumption as economics; that individuals are selfish, only with a twist: since evolution has to do with passing on genes, it’s the genes themselves who are selfish. These biologists would then argue that true altruism only exists because sometimes it’s worth helping someone that share genes with you. Or in the case you mention, because you believe they might share genes with you.
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Another interesting result of these theoretical biologists is that the male/female ratio in a species has to be around 50/50. The argument is here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisher%27s_principle#Basic_explanation
This is due to the way genetics works, and you can’t get away from it (presumably), even though males are generally less useful to propagating the species (i.e. they can’t have children), so that the species could get by with a lot less males.
The excess of males can explain why in some species they have to compete (flashy colors, actual fights, etc.) and can afford to “waste” the resources needed for that competition. But it can also explain why it made sense for species to evolve in a way that males take part into taking care of their progeny along with the females.
I am also aware that evolutionary biology, explained like that, sounds a lot like economics. Actually it’s a lot like economics: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selfish_gene