2000: Fuck these penguins and their image!
Comment on Dedication
trolske@feddit.de 5 weeks ago
Damn, I’m getting flasbacks from that. I had to make a presentation whether functional necrophilia in animals is adaptive during my master studies. I had to read so many papers discussing the details. Conclusion: not enough evidence to conclude it’s adaptive
Anticorp@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
General_Effort@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Any information about “unnatural” acts in nature was suppressed until the 1990s or so. Of course, by then it wasn’t so bad anymore, but still. Conservatives don’t fuck around when they cancel.
I think Biological Exuberance by Bruce Bagemihl had a big role in calling this out and paving the way for Kees Moeliker. I guess that is how you got saddled with the presentation, yes?
For those who don’t know, Moeliker gave a really good TED talk. Worth watching. It’s not about suppressing uncomfortable information, though.
Next Wednesday, June 5th, is Dead Duck Day.
Theharpyeagle@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
Christ, well… thanks for your work.
What does not being adaptive mean in this case?
trolske@feddit.de 5 weeks ago
Adaptive here means whether necrophilia occurs in order to still produce offspring, i.e. it’s ‘conscious’ (I use that term veeeery loosely here) or if it occurs just because the animals don’t recognize that the partner is dead.
I remember a paper about a frog species (not sure if it was the one from the meme) where the mails participated in necrophilia, but they basically tried to squeeze eggs out of anything they grabbed. Living female, dead female, stone, sponge. All the same.
Thrashy@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
The Wikipedia article for these little monsters describes the males aggressively fighting over females, to the point of killing some, and then squeezing the eggs out of their dead bodies to fertilize them… Gonna guess it’s the same one.
Tlaloc_Temporal@lemmy.ca 5 weeks ago
Would it be accurate to say that an adaptive trait is one selected by some evolutionary pressure, while a non-adaptive trait is just coincidence?
How could you tell if this trait was just very broad in it’s application, say just the instinct to squeeze things, verses something completely coincidental?
trolske@feddit.de 4 weeks ago
Yeah, that’s exactly right.