More on the Selfish Gene and Evolution 

+Aynsley Chaloupka Yeah. I don't care about being dead but couldn't it at least feel some sort of satisfaction?

R=Africa, Mexico,China, actually everybody except... K= Europe, Japan

It didn't take long, I'd supposed :(

+Rowan Humphreys Me too. It's probably the voice though.

Fun

Unless, you live in Far North Queensland, I think you're fairly safe. From cassowaries that is. Don't want an angry Koala coming after you, or any angry Aussie animal for that matter

Then you'll get run down by Wild hogs. NOWHERE IS SAFE

+rv3392 Especially those damn drop bears.

+rv3392 aka sydney funnel web

Good Sense The drop bears are everywhere

Nimicraft I forgot how many feet cats have

+Gabrielle Hull when a mommy plant and a daddy plant love each other very much.... a bee comes and tries to steal their pollen and nectar

Hahaha

+Gabrielle Hull Plants are either hermaphrodites or follow the same XX/ XY system as humans.

You believe Wikipedia?....

Fine: panique.com.au/trishansoz/animals/cassowary.html scribol.com/environment/animals-environment/the-most-terrifying-bird-on-earth www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/invasion-of-the-cassowaries-10896851/?no-ist journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=66857 www.qm.qld.gov.au/~/media/.../QM/.../n49-1-kofron.pdf www.outsideonline.com/1928291/10-worst-ways-die-wild Happy?

+Alex Harris science :)

+Alex Harris biology

aren't they cats?

LoveMeDaddy the potoo yes potoo pronounced poo-too just look it up

what is the ning

Nerdfighter social media

nerdfighter slash's random epic channel Oh yea, I should have assumed from your name that's what you meant. I thought Ning was a separate service. I'm on there. I don't do a lot with it though. I just post videos there sometimes. nerdfighters.ning.com/profile/JesseAgar?xg_source=profiles_memberList

nope

+Jaya Ramchandani In average yes, as it's a possibility to die from childbirth (=one less possible way to die).

+Luckyshot True, but women without children may be missing the support from future children. Not only are they potentially less likely to receive physical resources, but childless women may be more susceptible to loneliness, depression, and mental stagnation. It'd be interesting to learn the results of such a study.

+Luckyshot That is a flawed argument. It is possible to die from eating, is it therefore the case that you will live longer by not eating because you have one less possible way to die? Simply removing one way to die does not necessarily result in an average longer lifespan. A single thing like 'having no children' actually has a multitude of consequences to consider. Depending upon cultural practices, for instance, not having any children could result in a woman menstruating hundreds of times more often than a woman who does have children (for example in a culture where women breastfeed continuously, keeping levels of the hormone prolactin high in their systems which prevents ovulation) which is hypothesized to be the main source of endomitriosis. Also, not having children might mean sexual abstinence, and sexual abstinence is very dangerous over the long term. It doubles your chance of heart attack, greatly increases the chance of contracting various cancers, increases your chance of depression, anxiety, and other psychological issues, and it even increases your chance of death from ANY cause. Any study that shows the difference between the lifespan of childless women and mothers would be relevant only to the culture in which it took place, as well. Cultural factors play a very large role in child rearing that would have a big effect. How often, and for how long, a woman breastfeeds, how close a family is, whether children are raised privately or in common with others, etc, etc, etc.

+James Ru I'd consider it a variation of K strategy. By not reproducing themselves, they can dramatically increase the resources dedicated to keeping alive other, related children.

cOmAtOrAn Do you know what heterosexism is? It's the bias that everything revolves around heterosexuality. What if they not only don't reproduce but use those resources for their own needs and luxuries? Not everything is an equation about how to breed and maintain offspring.

James Ru Sorry, there's clearly been a bit of a miscommunication here. My bad. I was looking at the question from a purely evolutionary perspective, from which things like 'well-being' and 'happiness' are negligible. Reproduction is the ONLY thing of importance. From the more general viewpoint you were taking on, there are obviously many other important factors. Conversations are hard when you're accidentally talking about two different things.

Homosexuality exists in hundreds of species. Only now are scientists beginning to ask questions about what role this plays. In the past it was either ignored or considered a freak of nature. To say that everything reproduces therefore that must be the goal of life is a bias. Reproduction could in fact be a secondary effect of a goal. A species may not be considering happiness, but then again, they might. Or they might be considering something we haven't found due to a bias towards ignoring anything that doesn't hold reproduction in the center of attention. It's like when archaeologist would enter a new culture and take with them a European Christian bias. If they saw someone doing something odd, they would call it savage and try to change it to fit their culture. Or ignore it. Another example might be this. A factory reproduces the computers we're using. But we can agree that the factory is not the point of the computer.

+cOmAtOrAn I would be interested to read an argument weighing the effects of intangibles like love, happiness, and bitterness factor in reproductive fitness. Intuitively, stronger feelings of love might lead to more relationships and stronger bonds, maybe increasing fitness. I've read a study somewhere where participants with lower self-reported happiness had shorter lifespans due to poorer cardiovascular health. Just my two cents.

***** oh...ok thanks

Joke?

+XxXPhaSeIlLuMiNaTiXxX W Fetus Slayer 666 I don't think so. Sadly.

Why do you think it is a joke?

You could say ethnicity is a social construct but race surely isn't. You are probably thinking about humans and the whole caucasian/black/asian thing, right? Don't. People often use terms in a really wrong ways (like thinking that weight = mass, while in reality it is a force and as such must be measured in Newtons) and this is one of the cases, probably used to subdue Africans from Europeans during the slavery period. A better way to think of races would be using dog breeds. All of the dog breeds are from the same genre and family (Canis familiaris) but the physical characteristics (and sometimes behavioural) differ too much to be considered the same thing, sometimes making it impossible for them to mate in nature (tho you could still do it trought artificial...). It's a little complicated to talk about what specify races and all that because it's a really incomplete system and the closer DNAwise things are, more difficult it is to differentiate.

Manchease Skrelpher Genetics = is the study of heredity, or how the characteristics of living things are transmitted from one generation to the next. Classifying = arrange categories according to shared qualities or characteristics Examples of "genetic" variations -Some people have blue eyes and some have brown, some even have green -Skin tone is inherited from our parents, which is genetic Genetics are subtle differences. Race = group of people of common ancestry Ethnicity = social group that shares a distinctive culture, religion or language. No matter what, there are going to be differences between humans, and there's nothing wrong with it. To ignore that is ridiculous. It's not being subjective(meaning according to one's feelings or opinions) it's OBJECTIVE! (based on fact, it's quantifiable and measurable). Everything is genetic. Your personality, body type, hair, eyes, everything. It's not a social construct, it's called being able to point out differences and not being a blind fool.