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dying in your prime reproductive age! I guess dying because you think you’re going to impress’s a mate and stay alive is quite common.

• bryanrasmussen 6mo ago
  >I guess dying because you think you’re going to impress’s a mate and stay alive is quite common. based on my memory of readings in the matter I don't think so, most animal species "impress a mate" is either 1. do mating ritual better than others 2. actually directly compete with rival who has mate to win mate. In the second more rare scenario the actually directly compete with rival tends to be very ritualized, and thus when you lose you don't actually get significantly hurt. In the ritualized combat for mates some species have evolved to points in which accidents become a major problem, for example Stags locking antlers in combat for does. Obviously this is a scenario where you want to impress and stay alive but it doesn't work out, but it is relatively rare in the species that has evolved antlers to the point where it happens, and it is rare for species to have similar problems, generally the one who loses these competitions does not die, they just assume a lower status. So all that said the human tactic of Bob, hold my beer while I impress Cindy by riding this croc, is a pretty rare tactic for getting a mate.
  • bawolff 6mo ago
    In fairness, i dont think dying to impress a girl is particularly common among humans either.
    • bryanrasmussen 6mo ago
      that's true, but among humans the "impressing a girl" pattern seems to be more open ended as to how you will do it, and thus you end up with croc-riding accidents at times.
    • bryanrasmussen 6mo ago
      I was just thinking, perhaps all the fiction that has this as a plot point chooses it because of the man bites dog nature of the incident.
    • esseph 6mo ago
      I really did some extremely dumb things in my twenties that I'm extremely lucky didn't kill me.
      • bryanrasmussen 6mo ago
        I once tried to rappel off the side of an apartment building using a garden hose I stole from the building so I could get into my apartment that I was locked out of because my roommate had gone away for the weekend, this was not to impress a girl, it was to get changed to go to the club to meet a girl. I'm also afraid of heights. Luckily the apartment manager came driving up at the right time, probably saving my life.
    • redsocksfan45 6mo ago
      [dead]
• Sharlin 6mo ago
  On the contrary, that's very uniquely and peculiarly human stupidity, possibly caused by the fact that our brains take so long to fully mature. In other species, competing for mates (just like territory) is typically highly ritualized exactly because getting seriously hurt is the opposite of adaptive.
  • vasco 6mo ago
    Maybe google "Terminal Investment"
  • Eridanus2 6mo ago
    I feel that rituals of this nature work because they are backed implicitly by the threat of violence, which must be actualized from time to time in order for the ritual to hold force. Just like in human cultures.
  • watwut 6mo ago
    Humans dying to impress a mate are super rare in reality. And even among humans dying to impress ... it is more likely to happen in male only groups where men try to impress and dominate other men.
    • XorNot 6mo ago
      There's an alternate hypothesis about that which is that a lot of adolescent level risky behavior may actually be a way to weed out psychopaths. The argument is essentially: how come daring people to do something gross or embarrassing is so common? There's a weird social dynamic in being the one who goes through with it, and it frequently promotes group cohesion. So maybe the point of it isn't the act or social dominance, but to get people to display normal emotional responses - safe people will be embarrassed, or hesitant or display social support queues or disgust if they have normal emotional processing. The psychopaths? They'll struggle - particularly at that age where the opportunity to learn to blend hasn't had time to develop. Basically a group of guys egging each other on to do the riskier dive into the pool or something aren't trying to impress a mate, they're actually filtering for people who don't emotionally react correctly to whatever the dare is.