Rob wrote:

<<I can add soemthing to the cannibalism:
I once watch a nature show in which male lions would kill cubs.  The
narrator said this was because the females would not go into heat, and
therefore not mate, if they had cubs.  I find this odd, since asidefrom
cruely, it does not seem to benefit the species.-Rob>>

Hmm... if I'm reading this right, there is a Darwinian explanation. If
some females WOULD go into heat and mate whether or not they had cubs,
then theoretically only the offspring of those who did not would die,
and eventually die out, both from lack of as much reproduction and
infanticide (or cub-icide). Which would leave lions who DID go into
heat despite having cubs (over an evolutionary amount of time), whose
cubs lived. Given that scenario, you get more lions than ever before.
However, there are potential snafus, as this could tax the lionesses
and reduce care to the cubs, so what it looks like right now is a
little evolutionary battle to see which way in the long run ends up
being most selective for survival.

The book "The Selfish Gene" goes into this kind of issue to a good
degree. Getting a tad off the topic, you could extrapolate this to
human behavior, and I think this is the illustration The Selfish Gene
provides... If women did not have sex outside of marriage (generally
speaking) in Victorian times, then marriage was more of a given for a
man (if he wanted to have an acceptable sex life). However, if more
women now are willing to have sex outside of marriage and to provide
many of the benefits of marriage without a lifetime commitment, then
marriage is no longer necessary for a man to have a sex life and that
may reduce his drive to commit to one woman. Now, question being, in
the long run which is the more selective state of affairs, the
free-floating easy-sex scenario, or the long term commitment
scenario... there are all sorts of factors that play into this (and go
figure, while women carry the stigma of 'wanting marriage and
commitment', it's the men who test happier when married, not the
women). If women across the board decided they just didn't want sex
without commitment, marriage rates might go up, and relatively soon.
(I have no idea which side of the fence I'm actually on with regard to
this question personally, as one would like to think that long term
commitment shouldn't be based on sex, though how much biological
practicality should you factor into relationships to, say, get what you
want for the future of the species?) It's interesting that in evolution
we cast our votes daily..


_________________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com