Why do women have periods when most animals don't?
1–10 of 68 posts
Re: Why do women have periods when most animals don't?
#2> It seems the list of animals that menstruate is quite short: humans, apes, monkeys, bats and elephant shrews. What do these seemingly disparate animals have in common?
My unfixed female dogs have periods. So either the article is poorly written, or they are ignoring animals that don't fit the theory.
Re: Why do women have periods when most animals don't?
#3> It seems the list of animals that menstruate is quite short: humans, apes, monkeys, bats and elephant shrews. What do these seemingly disparate animals have in common? My unfixed female dogs have periods. So either the article is poorly written, or they are ignoring animals that don't fit the theory.
> So either the article is poorly written
The headline is (extra apostrophe), so I'd assume the article is too. :)
Re: Why do women have periods when most animals don't?
#4> It seems the list of animals that menstruate is quite short: humans, apes, monkeys, bats and elephant shrews. What do these seemingly disparate animals have in common? My unfixed female dogs have periods. So either the article is poorly written, or they are ignoring animals that don't fit the theory.
Dogs don't have periods; they have estrous, commonly called "heat".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estrous_cycle - note specifically #Differences_from_the_menstrual_cycle
Re: Why do women have periods when most animals don't?
#5> It seems the list of animals that menstruate is quite short: humans, apes, monkeys, bats and elephant shrews. What do these seemingly disparate animals have in common? My unfixed female dogs have periods. So either the article is poorly written, or they are ignoring animals that don't fit the theory.
> So either the article is poorly written The headline is (extra apostrophe), so I'd assume the article is too. :)
The article's headline doesn't have the apostrophe.
Re: Why do women have periods when most animals don't?
#6Weird thing for hacker news
Re: Why do women have periods when most animals don't?
#7> It seems the list of animals that menstruate is quite short: humans, apes, monkeys, bats and elephant shrews. What do these seemingly disparate animals have in common? My unfixed female dogs have periods. So either the article is poorly written, or they are ignoring animals that don't fit the theory.
Dogs don't have periods; they have estrous, commonly called "heat". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estrous_cycle - note specifically #Differences_from_the_menstrual_cycle
Thanks. If people really want the one-sentence version:
"One difference is that animals that have estrous cycles reabsorb the endometrium if conception does not occur during that cycle. Animals that have menstrual cycles shed the endometrium through menstruation instead."
This is discussed in the OP at some length. Alas, the grandparent comment is something of a middlebrow dismissal.
Re: Why do women have periods when most animals don't?
#8tl;dr:
What we know for sure: foetuses produce hormones to keep the endometrial tissue from thinning. Once a zygote has implanted, the mother's hormones are thus no longer in control of whether her uterus will support its growth or not. Menstruation, when it happens, forcefully cleans out implanted zygotes, returning the uterine hormonal balance to normal.
What we guess that that implies: menstruation is a side-effect of enabling spontaneous abortion (miscarriage) of a still-live foetus, thus allowing females of those species to not have to go through the "avoid males you're not interested in during estrus" dance that most animals do. This confers social advantages.
In humans specifically, estrus is hidden completely from both male and female awareness. This confers further social advantages, but only could have evolved to fixation if the sexual-selection advantage of applying a "proximity during estrus" filter was completely outmoded/obviated by miscarriage.
Re: Why do women have periods when most animals don't?
#9Weird thing for hacker news
Downvoted but you have a point. Why is there no moderation with regards to topical content on HN? Why should HN be a place for pop-sci articles and repostings from the likes of the Economist, LA Times, BBC, etc. r/startups has more content pertaining to - you know - actually starting a technology business than HN does. HN lately reads like newsclippings sent to me by my grandma.
Re: Why do women have periods when most animals don't?
#10Weird thing for hacker news
From the Hacker News Guidelines:
On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.