Is grass big, strong, powerful or agile? How about viruses? What about ants?

How do bears square up against rednecks? Bigger, stronger, more powerful and more agile, so more evolutionarily advantaged presumably?

Ants are strong and strong. Individually and collectively. Their reproduction mechanism however sucks lets be honest here ;)

This is probably a taboo thing to say... But I'll offer it up and accept the criticism,

Wouldn't there be a selective advantage for males who were big enough to subdue or intimidate females. I hate it, but rape could possibly be a partial cause?

scott1328 wrote:This is probably a taboo thing to say... But I'll offer it up and accept the criticism,

Wouldn't there be a selective advantage for males who were big enough to subdue or intimidate females. I hate it, but rape could possibly be a partial cause?

Dangerous waters, full of sharks.

aliihsanasl wrote:

scott1328 wrote:This is probably a taboo thing to say... But I'll offer it up and accept the criticism,

Wouldn't there be a selective advantage for males who were big enough to subdue or intimidate females. I hate it, but rape could possibly be a partial cause?

Dangerous waters, full of sharks.

Perhaps. I trust the membership of this forum, to understand that my speculation in no way constitutes an endorsement of nor an apologetic for the crime of rape.

But the simple fact of the matter is: sometimes rape results in pregnancy. A pregnancy that the victimized female would not be able to prevent. There evolutionary consequences whenever a behavior results in birth.

Animavore wrote:

igorfrankensteen wrote:

VazScep wrote:

igorfrankensteen wrote:They include that there IS no logic behind a lot of what happens in evolution. It's mostly a luck thing. Classic example: there is and obvious evolutionary advantage to being the biggest, strongest, most powerful and agile creature in your environment.

Genetically? Consolidating your future reproductive success into a handful of huge monoliths that can get knocked out of the game by a bad cold seems pretty silly to me.

The way you phrase this, implies that evolution is the result of CHOICES AND DECISIONS. That is not how most of it has worked.

And besides, if you instead "choose" to "consolidate your future reproductive success" into a handful of very small, tasty morsels of prehistoric chicken nuggets, you ALSO aren't likely to fare well, again, unless something happens that wipes out your predatory neighbors.

That's my point. What is, is the result, NOT of some brilliant single entity DECIDING that this is what should be. According to the theories of evolution, what is, is simply the RESULT of what happened, intersecting with what was.

As Yoda might have put it, "there is no WHY."

I think he said, "try".

Which is why I said "might."

scott1328 wrote:

aliihsanasl wrote:

scott1328 wrote:This is probably a taboo thing to say... But I'll offer it up and accept the criticism,

Wouldn't there be a selective advantage for males who were big enough to subdue or intimidate females. I hate it, but rape could possibly be a partial cause?

Dangerous waters, full of sharks. :think:

Perhaps. I trust the membership of this forum, to understand that my speculation in no way constitutes an endorsement of nor an apologetic for the crime of rape.

But the simple fact of the matter is: sometimes rape results in pregnancy. A pregnancy that the victimized female would not be able to prevent. There evolutionary consequences whenever a behavior results in birth.

Being ignorant, how usual are rapes in animal kingdom? Lets say among apes? Because if its not usual reproductive strategy I see no reason humans should be exception.

lucek wrote:Are they?

When weight and height are controlled for there isn't a difference in strength between men and women.

AFAIK that isn't actually true. Even for men and women of equal height and bodymass, on average a larger proportion of bodymass for women comes from fatty tissues on, among other things, the breasts and butt. These are things controlled by differences in expression of hormones and stuff like that.

Generally men have slightly more upper body strenght even when height and total bodymass is controlled for, in part because the tissue composition is skewed slightly towards more muscle for men and more fat for women. For lower body strength they are about equal.

With regards to natural selection it's entirely possible there's no particular selective advantage to sexual dimorphism and it's just a byproduct of differences in hormonal regulations that control and influence the differences that relate to the reproductive organs. So it might easily be the case that it was never "selected for" that men be on average stronger, but that it's just a byproduct of the developmental regulations that control reproductive organ differences in men and women.

In the absense of a well-proven case for a selective advantage, I think we should say we have failed to falsify the null-hypothesis of nonadaptive evolution.

Animavore wrote:

igorfrankensteen wrote:it's a "which came first the chicken or the egg" thing.

The egg.

.. is actually true.

Rumraket wrote:

lucek wrote:Are they?

When weight and height are controlled for there isn't a difference in strength between men and women.

AFAIK that isn't actually true. Even for men and women of equal height and bodymass, on average a larger proportion of bodymass for women comes from fatty tissues on, among other things, the breasts and butt. These are things controlled by differences in expression of hormones and stuff like that.

Generally men have slightly more upper body strenght even when height and total bodymass is controlled for, in part because the tissue composition is skewed slightly towards more muscle for men and more fat for women. For lower body strength they are about equal.

With regards to natural selection it's entirely possible there's no particular selective advantage to sexual dimorphism and it's just a byproduct of differences in hormonal regulations that control and influence the differences that relate to the reproductive organs. So it might easily be the case that it was never "selected for" that men be on average stronger, but that it's just a byproduct of the developmental regulations that control reproductive organ differences in men and women.

In the absense of a well-proven case for a selective advantage, I think we should say we have failed to falsify the null-hypothesis of nonadaptive evolution.

Non-adaptive evolution is possible, but not likely. The bias in the animal kingdom is towards larger females than males, because eggs take more energy and nutrients to produce than sperm. Even in serial hermaphrodite fish, they are first male [when small], and if they survive, morph into females.
Males competing for harems. But human genes are being pulled every which way. Pedomorphosis, selection for gracile females, grandmother effects. I think we are looking at a mosaic of adaptations, which sometimes contradict each other. Male transcription factors want the baby to be large, and female factors want the baby to be small, so as to fit through the birth canal.

tuco wrote:
Being ignorant, how usual are rapes in animal kingdom? Lets say among apes? Because if its not usual reproductive strategy I see no reason humans should be exception.

Here's a cheerful selection from a single source:
http://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-an ... iant-jerks

For over an hour and a half, the male otter will hold the seal pup in this position, raping it until it is dead. Sometimes when the seal pup dies, it is just let go and the otter will begin to groom itself. Some otters, however, will hang on to the dead pup and continue to rape its dead and decaying corpse for up to a week later.

And then there's the rape. Sexual coercion isn't exactly unusual in the animal kingdom, but dolphins take it to the extreme. Dolphin males will form gangs, kidnap a female and then take turns raping her. What happens if there are no females around? Well, they don't turn to seals like the otters do ... they just rape a male instead.

Naturalist George Levick ventured to the South Pole with the 1910-1913 Scott Antarctic Expedition. His report on the sexual behaviors of these penguins was deemed too extreme for publication and was hidden for one hundred years. According to Douglas Russel who analyzed his work in 2012, "The pamphlet, declined for publication with the official Scott expedition reports, commented on the frequency of sexual activity, auto-erotic behavior, and seemingly aberrant behavior of young unpaired males and females, including necrophilia, sexual coercion, sexual and physical abuse of chicks and homosexual behavior." You can read the entire pamphlet here.

Male chimps who wish to drive a female into estrus don’t just kill her baby, but will dismember it and eat it right in front of her. What’s worse is that female chimps have been observed doing the exact same thing to other females, though the motives for this are not as well understood.

Then there are ducks. Rape is such an important mating strategy for many species of ducks that females have evolved maze-like vaginas to attempt to foil the strategy. As a result, duck penises are capable of rapidly solving three-dimensional mazes. I think there's a video of this....

This isn't the video I had in mind, but it'll suffice.

Just bookmarking, but another OT observation...6 foot otters? That's scarier than a Canadian beaver.

devogue wrote:Broadly speaking human males are physically stronger than females, and this phenomenon is also obviously very apparent across the animal kingdom.

Why is that?

Where there less males at one point, meaning they had to fight over females? Is it a hunter gatherer thing?

This is just the sort of question that makes a complete mockery of evolution and betrays a misunderstanding of natural selection.
You have phrased the question as if evolution is a goal seeking process, when it is in fact not a cause but an effect.
First thing to note is that not all males are stronger than females, second thing, they only appear stronger in some groups and in some areas of strength.
But the real question is never "why", but always "how". How is it that sexual dimorphism has been the consequence of natural selection.
What you find is that in some primates there is very little difference, and in other early humans the differences are might have been much greater than now. Certainly gorillas show the most, But since there are species that show the opposite (not necessarily human), you have to also ask how is it that that strategy can work as well as a bigger male smaller female.
Selection actually provides the adaptation BEFORE the selection process. And the behaviour is governed BY the adaptation not, and so there is no reason WHY. The only reason is that the differences are not led to maladaption, and that behaviour has accommodated what has been given it my mutation.
It does not take much imagination to realise that a much better way for sexual dimorphism to work successfully would be to make the female stronger in order to bear the children; reproduction being at the very cutting edge of evolution. and this works very well for spiders. It could also work for other species - humans included.
So evolution often produces RIDICULOUS results.
Bigger males is exactly the same consequence that has led to the stupidly long necks of Giraffes.
Contrary to popular belief
GIRAFFES DO NOT EAT FROM TREES very much, they mostly graze grass. SO the idea that they have long necks for that reason IS WRONG.
The reason Giraffes tend to have long necks is because short necked males always loose the battle for females and do not pass on their genes. You have to see tow male giraffes thrashing it out to know why this is important. And just like the biggest male Gorilla wins the harem; big stupid lunks of men tend to beat the shit out of weedy guys.
Take a look

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKVYAqtKBVI

Sadly the female offspring have been burdened with these silly necks and have to struggle to eat and drink with them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrNds0ydBK0

Not usual reproductive strategy then, or strategy used under certain circumstances/by certain type of males?

We are debating: Whey are human males physically stronger then females? and proposition was made:

scott1328 wrote:This is probably a taboo thing to say... But I'll offer it up and accept the criticism,

Wouldn't there be a selective advantage for males who were big enough to subdue or intimidate females. I hate it, but rape could possibly be a partial cause?

If I understand it correctly, according to this proposition stronger males had evolutionary advantage because they could rape weaker females.

The problem or issue I see here is "partial cause". What is partial cause? How to measure it? Disregarding this for its not possible to determine(?), question to me is whether we can verify the proposition elsewhere in nature where such strategies still exist, respectively how usual/common they are. Exceptions to rule are not usual/common strategies.

It's only been in more recent history that marriage has been commodified and formalised _ not long enough to make much difference
So Let's face it; Women do the choosing.

The'd rather have a man that can protect her, and the man would rather have a wife who is not capable of beating the shit out of him when she hits him (as she will).

So, in as much as size is related to genes on the Y chromosome, the result of these choices would probably lead to this sort of differentiation, over time.

And on the funny side.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BeGnMFhg3-A

Hobbes Choice wrote:It's only been in more recent history that marriage has been commodified and formalised _ not long enough to make much difference
So Let's face it; Women do the choosing.

The'd rather have a man that can protect her, and the man would rather have a wife who is not capable of beating the shit out of him when she hits him (as she will).

So, in as much as size is related to genes on the Y chromosome, the result of these choices would probably lead to this sort of differentiation, over time.

Women do the choosing unless they are raped and unable to fend off the rapist. Furthermore, in a social species like humans, a woman's family very often makes the choice for her.

I think I see duck genitals.

We are not looking at humans, we are looking at other animals, whether or not rape is usual reproductive strategy among them.

I can Google cuckoos, their brood parasitism respectively, then say that human males who impregnate females being in relationship with another male had evolutionary advantage because of this strategy which is today translated into certain male/human traits. Actually, I do not think so.

Rachel Bronwyn wrote:I think I see duck genitals.

They're difficult to miss!