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Macaques at Japan reserve get first alpha female in 70-year history

theguardian.com

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Re: Macaques at Japan reserve get first alpha female in 70-year history

#51

Post by lkrubner »

We should expect to see this throughout the world, as the climate crisis intensifies. We should expect to see this especially in intelligent or social species. Game theory predicts that, from the point of view of parents, when the population is expanding it is better to have sons and when the population is shrinking it is better to have daughters. A son might have a lot of children when times are good and zero children when times are bad. A daughter is likely to always have some children, and therefore is a safer bet when things are bad. This shifts the incentives for parents. When population is falling, parents have an incentive to care less about their sons, and to invest more resources in their daughters.

That much is known.

We can also speculate that if daughters are now receiving more investment as children, they are better positioned to go higher in society as they become adults. A general shift in political power, throughout social species, should be expected, as the climate crisis threatens more and more species with extinction.

This might extent to even those species in zoos, as their population usually is not allowed to expand.

Re: Macaques at Japan reserve get first alpha female in 70-year history

#52

Post by Joeboy »

ookdatnog wrote: post #43
graderjs wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally! Agree that feminists and modern women aspiring to adopt male traits rather than embracing innate female goddess energy and power is stupid, especially when they, at the same time, "stand against" how "toxic" men are. But then again, some of those traits you pretend are toxic, are actually just awesome, and work in the human world. So why should "man" or "woman" polarity have dibs on that stuff? That genderin…

> Agree that feminists and modern women aspiring to adopt male traits rather than embracing innate female goddess energy and power is stupid "Agree that"? What are you on about? The parent comment can't remotely be interpreted to be saying this. > ... especially when they, at the same time, "stand against" how "toxic" men are. The term "toxic masculinity" does not imply "masculinity = toxic". Rather, our culture asso…

> The term "toxic masculinity" does not imply "masculinity = toxic".

It totally does though, whether that's the intention or not. If I talk about "greedy Frenchmen", that technically just means, the (perhaps tiny) subset of Frenchmen who are greedy, but in practice, through a quirk of language, it also communicates an idea about Frenchmen being greedy.

Hopefully, "greedy Frenchmen" is not an expression that pushes anybody's buttons too much, but I think most people will be able to think of comparable "[Adjective] [Noun]" examples that illustrate the problem more vividly.

Re: Macaques at Japan reserve get first alpha female in 70-year history

#53

Post by astrojams »

lkrubner wrote: post #51

We should expect to see this throughout the world, as the climate crisis intensifies. We should expect to see this especially in intelligent or social species. Game theory predicts that, from the point of view of parents, when the population is expanding it is better to have sons and when the population is shrinking it is better to have daughters. A son might have a lot of children when times are good and zero childr…

Wow this is fascinating. I'd love to read more about this, do you have any links to articles discussing this behavior?

Re: Macaques at Japan reserve get first alpha female in 70-year history

#54

Post by IanClarke »

serverholic wrote: post #26
graderjs wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because, I suppose, people seem to have forgotten that.

Forgotten what? If gender doesn't matter then why is this newsworthy? And if people forgot something then why did they forget it in the first place?

Gender doesn't matter, except when it matters. We just seem to not be able to agree where and when it matters.

Re: Macaques at Japan reserve get first alpha female in 70-year history

#55

Post by IanClarke »

turing_complete wrote: post #25
graderjs wrote: post #9

This is awesome. To get the top job, she: beat up her own mother; then took on the existing alpha 4x her age, and probably larger; then in the next 'peanut session' he had to backdown and let her eat first; and now she walks with an erect tail and goes and shakes trees for fun--It expresses her power. How cool is that! It just goes to show, it's never about gender, just about choices, ambition and how brave you choos…

I am really not sure if this comment is ironic or not. It reads like it has to be, but today you never know.

I read it as ironic.

If it is not then: Wow.

Ridiculous statement: "It just goes to show, it's never about gender, just about choices, ambition and how brave you choose to be."

Followed by: "Fuck yeah!"

--> Ironic in my world, but "the other side ("feminists") seem to have adapted to also address / talk to (deceive/decept) 'more conservative' people with their speech. We try to include/reach each other.

Re: Macaques at Japan reserve get first alpha female in 70-year history

#56

Post by whatshisface »

lkrubner wrote: post #51

We should expect to see this throughout the world, as the climate crisis intensifies. We should expect to see this especially in intelligent or social species. Game theory predicts that, from the point of view of parents, when the population is expanding it is better to have sons and when the population is shrinking it is better to have daughters. A son might have a lot of children when times are good and zero childr…

That makes no sense to me because for every child a daughter has, someone's son had a child. It has to balance out unless someone invents monkey mitosis.

Re: Macaques at Japan reserve get first alpha female in 70-year history

#57

Post by IanClarke »

lkrubner wrote: post #51

We should expect to see this throughout the world, as the climate crisis intensifies. We should expect to see this especially in intelligent or social species. Game theory predicts that, from the point of view of parents, when the population is expanding it is better to have sons and when the population is shrinking it is better to have daughters. A son might have a lot of children when times are good and zero childr…

The guys weren't cutting it any more. They were not delivering on the expectations of the group (growing it). Life became too harsh and stressful for them, they are not even mating any more, since the offspring couldn't be fed, so they stop breading with the females. Still: Everyone is disappointed and the males know it, too... affecting their behavior which gets less dominant/aggressive. The females are now in focus, since they procreated more reliably (on average, the old alpha, that had a lot of offspring, is likely dead by now). The shift to a female leader means the population is in trouble and in decline. A crisis manager(female) gets installed.

Note that typically older males mate with (much) younger females: It's no coincidence, that she is that much younger than her male counter parts: She is angry about her mating partners that they have stopped mating (with her). Older females have offspring. The old alpha male, which is dead, has a lot of offspring. The external life conditions just became too harsh, this is not a happy setup. There are 2 strategies, but one is to react on external circumstances (stop procreating), instead of blindly going ahead and having to stem the bill later (starving babies). Apes are intelligent enough for the first, but there are furious women now (including "her").

Re: Macaques at Japan reserve get first alpha female in 70-year history

#58

Post by Blikkentrekker »

lkrubner wrote: post #51

We should expect to see this throughout the world, as the climate crisis intensifies. We should expect to see this especially in intelligent or social species. Game theory predicts that, from the point of view of parents, when the population is expanding it is better to have sons and when the population is shrinking it is better to have daughters. A son might have a lot of children when times are good and zero childr…

This like most evolutionary psychology seems like one of those “anything goes” explanations that simply seems like a plausible explanation, but can just as easily be offered to explain falsehoods.

The problem with it is that one can invent a scenario that never happened and asked for an explanation and similar such plausible explanations can be proffered for it, but there's really no way to actually verify and test them.

It can just as easily be explained with “It is a simple fluke that will repeat itself in another 70 years.”.

Re: Macaques at Japan reserve get first alpha female in 70-year history

#59

Post by [deleted] »

whatshisface wrote: post #56
lkrubner wrote: post #51

We should expect to see this throughout the world, as the climate crisis intensifies. We should expect to see this especially in intelligent or social species. Game theory predicts that, from the point of view of parents, when the population is expanding it is better to have sons and when the population is shrinking it is better to have daughters. A son might have a lot of children when times are good and zero childr…

That makes no sense to me because for every child a daughter has, someone's son had a child. It has to balance out unless someone invents monkey mitosis.

[deleted]

Re: Macaques at Japan reserve get first alpha female in 70-year history

#60

Post by Blikkentrekker »

eadmund wrote: post #8
tokai wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She's also 22 years younger than him.

You inspired me to the lifespan of Japanese macaques, and it is 27 years; the previous alpha male was 31 years old, which suggests to me that he must have been pretty over the hill. Given that she is smaller than the average male macaque, I imagine that this is not a terribly stable situation.

A good point; it's entirely possible that this is only a very temporary challenger, who will soon be challenged again, and be defeated.
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