"Their Sex" by Wang Dake New Star Publishing House
How scheming is the animal "in love"?
Wang Dake, a PhD in the Institute of Birds at Oxford University, was always asked by friends: Dake, why do you want to study animal dating? Wang Dake expressed helplessness. She found that this was not something that could be explained clearly in just a few words. The way to quickly pull out of the quagmire was to answer: "To study how to find a partner." To be precise, it was to stand on the shoulders of Darwin to find a partner.
In nature, any animal has to face the challenge of survival. In addition to ensuring its own survival, animals also have the instinct to continue their genes. Survival is difficult. I wonder if there are still animals tomorrow after today. In order to survive and continue to survive, various survival strategies have been evolved. These survival strategies are based on their own past experience and animals' understanding of their own species groups. This is amazing in this regard. Compared with advanced animals like humans, this is nothing. Human reflection and understanding can quickly adjust their survival strategies and always allow humans to take the initiative. Other low-level animals often gain an understanding of self-survival through evolution and generational inheritance, which also makes the animals' survival strategies diverse and more targeted.
So, Wang Dake wrote this book "Their Sex" seriously and seriously, which shows that animals are not only valuable for research, but also very interesting - she talks about the inheritance of animals from the survival instincts of animals, and various animals have developed various strategies for the purpose of courting. Through scientific research in the book, readers can understand that animals are not stupid at all. Between competition and cooperation, jungle law and urban order, they have found their own balance point in evolution, and this balance point has also made them proliferate and grow.
For example, how do female blue peacock identify male mass? Female has its own logic. If the male in front of him has characteristics that are unfavorable to survival but can still be displayed without reservation in front of females, then it must have special and unique survival skills. Based on this understanding, when choosing a mate, the male blue peacock will scream and use the harsh cry to show its survival advantages.
Generally speaking, nature will first filter out those animals that are screaming. If it is a predator, screaming will scare away prey. If it is a predator, screaming will cause danger. Especially when the courtship is done, the screaming may attract natural enemies to capture all these "young men and women". But even so, high-quality male blue peacock will show itself to the fullest in order to attract the opposite sex. Since the shouting can add points to yourself, some male blue peacocks with poor abilities and qualities also learn to scream, allowing the courtship market to be consumed. There are also some scheming blue peacocks who hold a small wooden stick in their mouths after they cried, pretending to be food, and further declare that they have meat to eat and use their abundant conditions to deceive the females. According to statistics, the call can attract more attention from 14.4% of females, so the males show themselves frantically, create topics for themselves and increase traffic. These survival strategies developed based on the female blue peacock's mate selection psychology have also made it difficult for the female peacock to distinguish the authenticity, and invisibly expand the number of races. In nature, animals need to rack their brains in order to be able to inherit their genes, while the other party also needs to make a lot of effort to find excellent genes. Courting of animals is not just a one-way behavior, but the result of the continuous struggle between male and female sides fighting wits and courage to eventually lead to cooperation.
The unfavorable principle of Israeli zoologist Zahavi mentioned: "Animals and humans are not lucky enough to prosper while doing the most risky and excessive behavior, but they prosper because of such behaviors." The author explains: If it takes a huge price to show a signal, and the individual still wants to show the signal, then this signal can honestly reflect the individual's quality. This requires the sender to have enough courage and confidence.
Of course, in addition to those inclined groups, there are also groups with evil thoughts. Eyes Filterhead is very interesting. Before the male fish, they must first get their own house, find a hidden nest in the water, and decorate their new house. The book uses idol dramas to describe how much romance the male fish has created for courtship. However, after a change of tone, I didn’t expect that this secret and warm home had long been targeted by "illegalists". The female fish had just ovulated, and the thief outside the window rushed in with lightning speed to "pick a bargain". When the owner realized that a fish had broken into the private house, the thief had already escaped, leaving behind a mess.
, the "egg stealing" behavior is widely present in fish that ovulate in vitro. The landlord class who can have a house is usually tall, mighty, beautiful males. In a water area, those places with good locations and sufficient oxygen are basically covered by the landlords. The remaining male fish either live in dilapidated old houses or wander around without a fixed place. Head-on conflicts, these male fish are often not opponents of the landlord class, but they are small in size and are veterans who play sneak attacks. This also made the landlords unable to defend themselves and were very angry.
Fish breed in vitro, and the price paid by males and females is not too high, so males and females are more equal. Some male fish also have the behavior of raising broods and protecting their cubs, becoming super dads. Therefore, female fish also attaches great importance to the sense of responsibility of male fish and prefer male fish with the ability to protect eggs and children. Knowing the criteria for female fish to choose a mate, some less excellent male fish began to be terrified. The book lists examples of male fan-fin dart bass. Although they ignore their homes, they pretend to be a good father. Over time, egg-shaped spots have evolved on the fish fins. From a distance, it looks like a father of the Gu family is taking the children for a walk, which makes the female fish have an illusion.
People always say that humans are evolved from fish. Although this is true or false, I really think that all kinds of fish in the book have to lose to them. In order to pretend to be a good father, the male three-thorn thorn fish will even sneak into the hut built by other fish and steal other people's "children". It is not about raising these fish eggs, but about pretending to be a popular good father, creating the illusion of hard work and a family of children and grandchildren. For female three-thorn spinyfish, the more eggs there are in the nest, the more attractive they are to them. In this way, the eight hundred "fake fathers" fooled the female fish and used the scam to reproduce their offspring. After the fish eggs that were borrowed as disguise were used, most of them became the "fake father"'s Chinese food. This kind of unethical and smoking is a common thing in the animal world. In order to survive various animals, they are doing everything they can to achieve their goals in order to continue to survive.
Why did ban behaviors not evolved for the deceptive behavior caused by reproduction? On the one hand, this deception accelerates the reproduction of races. Too much pursuit of reproduction behavior of high-quality genes will lead to a decrease in reproduction efficiency. From this point of view, this deception is beneficial to the continuation of races. On the other hand, animals rarely use expensive signals, but only traditional signals with higher efficiency and lower cognitive costs, which makes it difficult for observers to test each individual. Low-cost and low-cognitive difficulty signals are easily imitated, which increases the cost of discrimination by observers. They can only use spot checks. However, as long as they are spot checks, there will definitely be situations of taking advantage of troubled waters. In this way, the various scheming and wrong ways in the book have both moral debt and value.
(Original title: How to stand on Darwin's shoulders to find a partner animals "fall in love" each have their own scheming)
Source: Beijing Evening News Author: Xia'an
Process Editor: u060
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