M A M M A L   W H E R E!
GREETINGS! FELLOW MAMMALS...

Killer whale in flight

PARENT — CHILD CONFLICT Kid's out of CONTROL and DRIVING YOU CRAZY? Are they by any chance MAMMALS? That just might be very important! MAMMALS normally come equipped at NO EXTRA ADDITIONAL COST with an interesting mechanism to disperse offspring. This triggers about the time of sexual maturation — causing conflict and leading to separation of the generations — and the siblings. It's ONLY natural!

Know any "picky eaters"? I'll bet they're mammals too! The young mammal normally goes into a phase of very picky eating habits early in life. This is an evolutionary mechanism to prevent food poisoning during the time when the little creature would be very likely to poison itself — if it tended to be very adventurous with food choices, without the critical knowledge of what will kill you in the big bad world.

The "milk bottle age" for humans is about 32 years...

That's why it's pretty much all down hill — physically AND mentally — from that point in life on.

The old genes are only "product tested" for that life-span. At about 32 years they begin to deteriorate, break down, falter and fail. The "milk bottle age" is a statistical concept — but its implications are very real.

Think back to the age of door-to-door bottled milk delivery, (YES I KNOW IT WAS BEFORE YOUR TIME) — a milk bottle might have the ability to last 25 years of "normal use" without actually "wearing out" to the point of requiring replacement. However, in reality the "odds" were that it would not last anywhere near that long because of all the opportunities for breakage. 25 months would be typical! It's exactly the same principle during the 1,200,000 years our direct ancestors spent living off the Plains of Africa — on average they were 'lion lunch' before age 32!

A sexy mammal is a youthful mammal. Doctor David Weeks of the Royal Edinburgh Hospital has determined that having sex is directly related to the aging process. The good doctor Dave, who is a neuro-psychologist studied over 3,500 couples aged 18 to 102 in Great Britain, Europe and America. He concluded that having sex three or more times per week will lead, on average to a lessening of aging by ten to twelve years! Live long and ...er, "prosper"!

...before you go off to... well, there are a couple of methodological issues to review: youthful looks is an attractor factor, as is physical symmetry and height for males. This would postulate that more "attractive" people live longer AND have more sex - what makes up "attractiveness" promotes the genes more successfully with more opportunities for promotion — a "positive feedback loop" with longevity as the result!

(Then why take a chance - better screw around as much as you can, just to be on the safe side!)

Intelligence, posture, diet... the number of offspring and oh yes, the mammal's number of breasts, are a fine balancing act for mammals. How large a brain you have determines how CLEVER you'll get (as a species). In general, how clever you are determines how well you EAT — ...assuming that you have to hunt and compete for your food in the wild long, long before McDonalds, Taco Bell, genetic plant engineering, etc…

How well you manage your food source determines how long your INTESTINES will need to be. (which are best kept in a handy location such as inside your body to digest food!) How big a head you'll have — to hold the brain you need to work all this out is limited at birth to what will pass through the pelvis of mommy mammal and the size of the pelvic birth opening must ensure that the mommy creature can still locomotivate to elude predators, care for other offspring — as required, and find adequate FOOD. As you can see — you really are what you eat...

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...think of this the next time you see some bubble-headed creature WALKING down the landing ramp from an alien spacecraft!

Mammals develop breasts...in both the male and female models! This is due to the fact that the nipples develop in the embryonic stage before the gender is actually differentiated — all that X-Y chromosome / fastest sperm stuff... up until then, it could go either way! In males the breasts don't mature at puberty. Males nipples are generally pretty harmless — useful perhaps to attach a cloak as the Roman Centurians did, or for decoration and adornment in some primitive cultures (i.e. San Francisco, Toronto, Kingston...?).

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…they're essential to nurse the young. In almost all mammal species the adult breasts do not exist until near the time of child-birth — and then breasts quickly recede and disappear after the young are weaned, (BOOOooooo Boobs!) uniquely, in humans — these particular protuberances also serve as a secondary sexual feature: specifically as a "sexual trigger" — predicated an additional evolutionary purpose; to confuse potential sexual partners as to the female's reproductive status (UHUH? I'm confused!) Concomitant to this is the well documented gender specific differential sexual response to visual cues. See also: symmetry (below!)

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SELKET circa 1338 BC

There are TWO other innate human sexual "hard-wired" triggers — take care — while this specific knowledge has been around for at least 3,500 years — as witnessed by my long-dead friend on the left, TOO MUCH KNOWLEDGE can be a very, very DANGEROUS thing...

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Symmetry! It really works!

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If you are symmetrical — geometrically balanced so to speak — you will be perceived as more attractive, you will earn more money, be more intelligent and make more money for your company than asymmetrical employees! If you should commit a crime, then a judge or jury will give you a less harsh sentence than if you are asymmetrical. Symmetrical lawyers even win more cases. Symmetric people smell better to the opposite sex and have more sex (especially symmetrical men) than asymmetrical individuals and have more friends. Even in the insect world — symmetry has been shown to be a statistically significant mating advantage!

Get SYMMETRICAL!!!

For those of you involved in modelling and the beautification industry that means that you must use every trick in the book to have an "oval" shaped face!

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Sexual dimorphism — the difference between average male and female body size is the primary determinate of "polygynousness"...

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The classic reason for one sex to be larger than the other is competition within the LARGER sex for mating with the smaller. Basically, in mammals this means big MALES, with lots of low-cost sperm, competing for the opportunity to fertilize the female's precious eggs — the female, having invested much more in each egg, can afford to be really fussy about who gets to fertilize it...

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If she chooses (directly, as in the classic 'female choice', or indirectly, as with joining a harem) bigger males — then males will get BIGGER! If she chooses colorful males, then males get gaudy. If she chooses males which hang around and help bring up the young, then males get faithful and helpful. If she chooses males with shiny silver sports cars...well you get the idea.

These are the general patterns. In those circumstances where parental care is necessary to ensure the survival of the offspring, a male can be pulled (kicking and screaming) into looking after its brats and easily get left holding the baby — so to speak.

In fish and amphibians with external fertilization and where the female has lots and lots of low-cost eggs, the very nature of the act means the male is often the LAST to have contact with the eggs — giving the female the opportunity to scoot off and leave him with the job of parental care. (There are many excellent examples of good daddy fish, such as sea horses.) Where fertilization is internal — such as amniotes, the female can't do it this way, but males can be made to be better parents than females if the species goes through a situation where the care of both partners is essential to successful reproduction.

If conditions then become less harsh, each will have an equal chance — in evolutionary time, to take off first — leaving the other with sole responsibility for care of the young. Sometimes it will be the male, other times the female — there are a number of examples in bird species where the males look after the young (phalaropes are one). With mammals (remember mammals; this page is about MAMMALS) this behavior is rare, but I can assure you not IMPOSSIBLE. In almost all mammals there is a huge initial imbalance in investment: not only do females produce the egg, but they gestate and suckle (ignoring the arrival of babe formula) the young.

In situations where the male is the sole carer, it is now he, rather than the female, who has the most to offer a prospective romantic interlude. And it will thus be she who must compete for his compliance. Leading, perhaps, to selection for larger females…

There's evidence for this in recent research on the Raptors - the original ones, not the Toronto basketball team. And of course the female, freed from the burden of maternal responsibilities, can now indulge in polyandry - ie: mating with a number of males, leaving each mate to look after the resulting offspring. (Phalaropes are good examples - the female manages up to three broods, each with different mates, in the short Arctic summer.) With polyandry the selective pressures for larger females are even stronger - recent evidence indicates "T-REX" was in fact a bit of a runt - standing next to his even larger and powerful mate: the "T-REXette"!

Things sure might be different around here
— - if not for that astroid!