{"id":23077,"date":"2016-08-12T10:44:59","date_gmt":"2016-08-12T15:44:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=23077"},"modified":"2016-07-12T23:47:08","modified_gmt":"2016-07-13T04:47:08","slug":"evolution-complexity-and-human-mating-strategies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2016\/08\/12\/evolution-complexity-and-human-mating-strategies\/","title":{"rendered":"Evolution, Complexity, and Human Mating Strategies"},"content":{"rendered":"

Flashback Friday.<\/em><\/p>\n

I heard stories this week about dung beetles and cuttlefish.\u00a0 Both made me think about the typical stories we hear in the media about evolved human mating strategies.\u00a0 First, the stories:<\/p>\n

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Story #1 :The Dung Beetle<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Photo<\/a>
Photo by Camilo Hdo, retrieved from flickr.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A story on Quirks and Quarks<\/a> discussed the mating strategies of the dung beetle.\u00a0 The picture above is of a male beetle; only the males have those giant horns.\u00a0 He uses it to defend the entrance to a tiny burrow in which he keeps a female.\u00a0 He’ll violently fight off other dung beetles who try to get access to the burrow.<\/p>\n

So far this sounds like the typical story of competitive mating that we hear all the time about all kinds of animals, right?<\/p>\n

There’s a twist: while only male dung beetles have horns, not all<\/em> males have horns<\/a>.\u00a0 Some are completely hornless.\u00a0 But if horns help you win the fight, how is hornlessness being passed down genetically?<\/p>\n

Well, it turns out that when a big ol’ horned male is fighting with some other big ol’ horned male, little hornless males sneak into burrows and mate with the females.\u00a0 They get discovered and booted out, of course, and the horned male will re-mate with the female with the hopes of displacing his sperm.<\/p>\n

But.<\/p>\n

Those little hornless males have giant testicles, way gianter than the horned males.\u00a0 While the horned males are putting all of their energy into growing horns, the hornless males are making sperm.\u00a0 So, even though they have limited access to females, they get as much mileage out of their access as they can.<\/p>\n

The result: two distinct types of male dung beetles with two distinct mating strategies.<\/p>\n

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Story #2: The Giant Australian Cuttlefish<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"846693304_2d180b3fff_z\"<\/a>
Photo by Paul Oughton, retrieved from Flickr.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Naked Scientists<\/a> podcast featured a story about Giant Australian Cuttlefish.\u00a0 During mating season the male cuttlefish, much larger than the females, collect “harems” and spend their time mating and defending access. \u00a0Other males try to “muscle in,” but the bigger cuttlefish “throws his weight around” to scare him off.\u00a0The biggest cuttlefish wins.<\/p>\n

So far this sounds like the typical story of competitive mating that we hear all the time about all kinds of animals, right?<\/p>\n

Well, according The Naked Scientists story, researchers have discovered an alternative mating strategy.\u00a0 Small males, who are far too small to compete with large males, will pretend to be female, sneak into the defended territory, mate, and leave.<\/p>\n

How do they do this?\u00a0 They change their color pattern and rearrange their tentacles in a more typical female arrangement (they didn’t specify what this was) and, well, pass.\u00a0 The large male thinks he’s another female. In the video below, the cuttlefish uses his ability to change the pattern on his body. He simultaneously displays\u00a0a male pattern to the female and a female pattern to the large male on the other side.<\/p>\n