3 ms·
There's no reason to expect that in modern giraffes, increased neck length would lead to increased opportunities to reproduce. Or even a better chance of obtai
by msrenee 4y ago
There's no reason to expect that in modern giraffes, increased neck length would lead to increased opportunities to reproduce. Or even a better chance of obtaining food. Nature is full of trade-offs. There's a balance between how much advantage you get from an extra inch of neck length and the extra calories and increased stress on the body from that extra inch.
Giraffes aren't just going to keep getting taller until they have to bend over to eat leaves.
- kuhewa 4y agoAstute point. Similarly in pools of high level athletes you can't find correlations between sports success and certain traits that are well understood to promote performance. It would be too expensive to maintain many generations of giraffes with less sexual selection pressure to breed the equivalent of couch potato average Joes to test, but that's what model organisms are for.