6 ms·
The giraffe neck evolved for sexual combat?
- ourmandave 4y ago"It's over Antlerkin. I have the high ground."
- rembicilious 4y agoSadly the linked article hardly has anything to say about giraffes, giraffe breeding, giraffe evolution, or giraffe necks. Should have used the original https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abl8316 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abl8316
- tdumitrescu 4y agoA modern classic Tinder opener too: https://www.reddit.com/r/Tinder/comments/u4u9ke/giraffe_line_always_works_thanks_reddit/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Tinder/comments/u4u9ke/giraffe_line...
- onesafari 4y agoMale giraffes evolved to impress females by fighting each other with their necks. Male humans evolved to impress females by sending them a text message about how male giraffes impress female giraffes.
- qwerty456127 4y agoAFAIK giraffes then evolved to avoid unnecessary relations with opposite sexes and just be all gay peacefully.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- DesertVarnish 4y agoThis is a long standing debate in evolutionary biology, I wrote about it if anyone's interested in more context: https://www.maltinsky.net/blog/giraffe-evolution https://www.maltinsky.net/blog/giraffe-evolution.
- devoutsalsa 4y agolong standing... I see what you did there.
- dboreham 4y agoIt was a stretch though.
- aaaaaaaaata 4y agoPlease, no
- IntrepidWorm 4y agoDon't stick your neck out for them.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 4y agoOne question that comes to mind about this hypothesis, is if there is sexual dimorphism in neck length. Apart from the sexual prowess demonstrations, many of these ale traits for sexual combat are in fact a disadvantage. For example the brightly colored peacock, or the massive deer antlers, or as the article mentions, the massive sizes of walruses. In those cases, the female has a more optimal body, optimizing for survival vs sexual combat. If the neck of giraffes was primarily for sexual combat, you would think there might be some dimorphism.
- conductr 4y agoJust a casual passer by that found your question valid and interesting. I wonder if in this case, it just happened to be an advantage? It would start as a sexual combat thing, that result in access to food and increased visibility of predators, so there was no need for dimorphism. Perhaps even helps or explains why/how the trait became so pronounced. When compared to the other species you mentioned, giraffes are the broke clock being right twice a day.
- kadoban 4y agoBased on what I've previously seen (top comment in here seems to be a nice summary), it's more like neither explanation really has a lot going for it, despite how much sense they make if you don't look too closely.
- lurquer 4y agoIs there empirical evidence that giraffes with longer necks have a better chance of reproducing? A better chance of obtaining food? And, if so, what is the statistical benefit per extra centimeter of neck length? That would be science. But evolutionists rarely test these things. Do you know what happens when you remove a peacocks feathers? He gets just as much peahen action as any other peacock. The peahens couldn’t care less. This entire idea of tail feathers (or necks) lengthening as it confers a slight reproductive advantage is nonsense. https://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2008/03/27/2200822.htm https://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2008/03/27/2200822.h...
- ransom1538 4y agoOk. Let's talk about the real topic here: "Can giraffes swim?" I will save you a google search and no one knows for sure.
- rightbyte 4y agoThere has to have been some child giraffe that went out into deep water where it didn't reach the bottom? You could maybe extrapolate from that. Dog swimming surely ought to be unstable with that long of a neck and legs.
- mingusrude 4y agoHow does this save me a google search? Either it can swim (someone's seen it swimming) or it can't (nobody has seen it swim). If it maybe can swim, I have to google it.
- ransom1538 4y agolol. True. But if you find a swimming giraffe post it here. (Not computer animated).
- d--b 4y agoWhen reading about biology, I am always wondering if sometimes evolution happened just because it could? It is clear that natural selection exists, but it looks like there is no space for chance in evolutionary science (while the entire process of evolution seems based on chance). Not talking about giraffes particularly, cause it’d be weird that they got their very special anatomy from chance only, but in general I find it strange to always assign some agency to a process that is mostly random and whose success is only to produce species that survive.
- boomboomsubban 4y ago>It is clear that natural selection exists, but it looks like there is no space for chance in evolutionary science I've always assumed it's because evolution requires something happening thousands of times. The more events that are included in something, the less impact chance can have.
- ktc1 4y agoIsn't that exactly what genetic drift is?
- cortic 4y agoIts useful to think about natural selection like the R value for a virus. A gene + environment has an R value (like a virus + its environment. e.g. masks, geography, etc), if this value is higher than 1 it will, over time spread into the gene pool, and under 1 it will die out of the gene pool. If you think a gene proliferated into the gene pool just because, your still saying its R is 1+, only that the environment played a larger part than the gene.. which is probably always the case anyway.
- kuhewa 4y agoThe teleology is just shorthand, scientists aren't actually assigning agency. It's still possible to discuss drivers of selection pressure though, sometimes just easier (especially in sci comm) to explain some things quasi-teleologically. There's a number of ways to test how much 'chance' is involved. For example take independent emergence of a novel trait across many different taxa. Or take difference that emerge after a genetic bottleneck, like when a very small founder population establishes in a new isolated habitat. In the case of a giraffe neck, probably not that parsimonious that such a distinct feature would just arise due to drift.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- frank_bb 4y ago
- pvaldes 4y agoAs females have also a long neck, and suffer a lot of physiological troubles for it, most probably not. Or at least not only for that. There must be other reasons playing a role here. Finding that a long neck is an advantage in sexual combat can be just a bonus of having developed it first for other purposes.
- ramblerman 4y agoIs there a limit to how much male and females can practically diverge in mammals? I'm not at all schooled in genetics, so genuinely curious. But I could imagine that you can't have 2 genders of the same species that are completely different. Perhaps the neck length is such an attribute?
- pvaldes 4y ago> I could imagine that you can't have 2 genders of the same species that are completely different. This is called sexual dimorfism and is not a rare event. Really extreme examples appear in some deep sea fishes in the order Lophiiformes I mammals is not so extreme, but it occurs also. Both genders having a different size is common and is what we would find in giraffes if the neck were developped just for fighting.
- redbread 4y agoIn some of those fishes the dimorphism is so extreme that the male is basically parasitic to the female. E.g. Ceratiidae