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Maybe not as much as you would think. Naturally, not all males mate and the mating ratio is not always 1:1. Take humans for example, it's been shown our ancesto
by esturk 5y ago
Maybe not as much as you would think. Naturally, not all males mate and the mating ratio is not always 1:1. Take humans for example, it's been shown our ancestors comprise mostly of females in a ratio roughly 3:2 to males. That is, some male ancestor probably mated with more than one female ancestor somewhere.
- thaumasiotes 5y ago> it's been shown our ancestors comprise mostly of females in a ratio roughly 3:2 to males. I thought it was 2:1.
- caymanjim 5y agoI don't know what the numbers are like for elephants, but in many species, most males don't get to mate at all, and a handful of dominant males mate prodigiously. Even if tuskless males were viable, they'd fail miserably at mating if there were tusked males around, because they'd get their asses kicked.
- AussieWog93 5y ago>our ancestors comprise mostly of females in a ratio roughly 3:2 to males. For anyone else wondering how this is possible on an individual level, apparently a lot of people used to reproduce with their first and second cousins.
- manquer 5y agoStill not that uncommon in few parts of the world.
- TedDoesntTalk 5y agoI do not understand how mating with a 1st or 2nd cousin affects the ratio of females to males. Could you explain?
- AussieWog93 5y agoAssume that Bob knocks up both Alice and Eve. Alice has a son, Eve has a daughter. Alice's son knocks up Eve's daughter. Their kid will have two biological grandmothers, but only one biological grandfather. Apparently, historically, this type of thing was quite common and could heavily skew family trees towards the female side of things.
- tehjoker 5y agoThat skews the tree shape, but the odds of each baby are still ~50/50 so the overall population numbers should be stable.
- dotancohen 5y agoAussie was demonstrating how an individual could have more male ancestors than female ancestors. And his very simple example did in fact provide the 3:2 ratio that was previously mentioned.
- tehjoker 5y agoI think I misunderstood the proposition. Sorry.
- AussieWog93 5y agoThe overall population is roughly 50:50, but men are more likely to be the "final node" in the family tree. Let's adjust the example above slightly to include Bob's friend Darren, who who never got laid because he spent his whole life watching pornography and playing video games. Even in this case, despite the 50:50 ratio of males and females both across society as a whole and within each generation, the child has more male ancestors. This will be the case for any sufficiently large population where males have more variance in reproductive success than females, and people (of either sex) reproduce with others who have a shared ancestor (the closer the ancestor, the greater the effect the variance has on the ratio of male to female ancestors).
- 5y ago