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>Most intra-species fighting is not designed to end in murder That depends a lot on scarcity. If you are a male and you only get one chance at mating, you will

>Most intra-species fighting is not designed to end in murder That depends a lot on scarcity. If you are a male and you only get one chance at mating, you will probably fight to the death. If you will get plenty of other chances, then you might accept the results of a ritualised non-lethal combat (e.g. giraffes headbutting each other, rather than kicking). Its just evolution + game theory.

amunozo 19d ago
Is this backed by some anthropological real world examples, or are you just extrapolating theories?
- hermitcrab 19d ago
  I read it in an article that was talking about the application of game theory to biology/evolution and I believe it is well supported by evidence. But I can't remember the source.
- hermitcrab 19d ago
  [dead]
HarHarVeryFunny 19d ago
What animal species often offers males only one chance of mating ?! It's common among animal species for males to fight over females, but it's highly uncommon for them to fight to the death, because that is not evolutionary adaptive - it risks the individual as well as the genetic diversity of the group/species (and evolution is selecting for survival of the species, not the individual).
- hilariously 19d ago
  obligate male death happens, but usually in things like spiders after mating, so there's a few examples for you
  - HarHarVeryFunny 19d ago
    Fighting to the death and mating are not the same! There are a number of species where the female eats the male after mating - examples such as praying mantis and octopus. Both octopus males and females die after mating, the female after having protected the eggs, so it makes sense that she sometimes eats the male too (who is going to die anyway). But, examples like this are relatively rare, and for species specific reasons.
    - lightedman 19d ago
      "What animal species often offers males only one chance of mating ?!" "Fighting to the death and mating are not the same!" Your original question and your current statement are in confliction. Pick one.
      - HarHarVeryFunny 19d ago
        > If you are a male and you only get one chance at mating, you will probably fight to the death This is the comment I was responding to. The question was about pre-mating death matches between males, not post-mating snacking behavior of females.
- articulatepang 19d ago
  > evolution is selecting for survival of the species, not the individual This is very wrong. Evolution is selecting for the total reproductive fitness of genes, and to a slightly lesser extent, individuals. There’s no mechanism that helps the process of evolution select for the survival or reproduction of the species. See any recent textbook on evolutionary biology, or read Dawkins, or even Darwin. I don’t know where you got this idea but it’s exactly wrong.
  - HarHarVeryFunny 19d ago
    > There’s no mechanism that helps the process of evolution select for the survival or reproduction of the species The "mechanism" is just the process of evolution itself, and how it plays out in practice, e.g. via punctuated equilibrium. Over shorter timespans the gene pool of a breeding population incrementally drifts according to the success of individual genetics, but then once in a while, over multiple generations, something in the environment (disease, food, competition, etc) may change quickly and the gene pool as a whole, not just that of individuals, is thereby tested, with accumulations of previously benign changes sometimes suddenly becoming critical. In this way evolution is acting on the entire gene pool - of the species or more correctly of that interbreeding sub-population. Success in evolution, the ability of the species as a whole to adapt and compete, also requires genetic diversity, not only to avoid inbreeding, but also to provide species level resilience, and species level ability to quickly adapt. e.g. It seems that the success of sexual reproduction is because it is a way to "game the game" by increasing genetic diversity and therefore improve along these axis of resilience and fast adaptation. There are also social species, such as ourselves, where the social group becomes port of the individuals environment, and genetics best-fitted-to-the-environment becomes a group dynamic.
    - robocat 19d ago
      Nothing about evolution feels sensible or right: and the vast majority of people have severe misunderstandings about how it works (for example the Darwin awards are highly misleading). Even science reporting is often highly misleading[0]. Intuition is not trustworthy for this topic, and neither is our ambient knowledge. and one group ate their dead relatives’ brains at funerals so consistently that they gave themselves a mad cow type disease called kuru, which killed a large percentage of their population and then, within a few generations, evolved a genetic mutation[1] that protects against it, one of the fastest cases of natural selection ever documented in humans Referencing the Wikipedia article on kuru which references this paper: https://researchonline.lshtm.ac.uk/id/eprint/4514/1/nejmoa0809716.pdf https://researchonline.lshtm.ac.uk/id/eprint/4514/1/nejmoa08... The suggested evolution is: * there is one ancestor with a gene that protects against kuru. * children and mothers without that ancestor often die from kuru * children of that ancestor have a much higher chance of survival * eventually everyone is a child of that ancestor * any children of that ancestor that didn't get the protective gene also eventually die out The gene is selected for. There are no population effects. The key part in the paper is where they mention adult men with the gene, because they are measuring the counterfactual of the many males that died because they didn't have that gene (males that ate brains as young kids but then died because they didn't have the gene from that ancestor). The paper is hard to understand in part because of the confounding effects of males not eating the brains. Plus the confounder of stopping cannibalism in 1960. The idea of "Group selection" is fundamentally wrong - regardless of how sensible the belief feels. Anybody using the words "group selection" is indicating their belief system, and they usually then have biased narratives to 'support' their belief. [0] horrifically incorrect sciencedaily link in Wikipedia. [1] We don't fucking evolve genetic mutations
- hermitcrab 19d ago
  >evolution is selecting for survival of the species, not the individual I believe that is wrong. Selection works on the level of the individual and their genes. Dawkins covered this extensively in at least one of his books. Any professional biologists care to comment?
  - HarHarVeryFunny 19d ago
    I think it's most accurate to say that selection works at the level of genes (or combinations of genes), not of individuals, and of course many individuals of a species will share some/most of their genetics. You can tell it as a story (easier to teach) of individual success in surviving and having children, which isn't wrong, but it's also not the big picture.
  - int_19h 18d ago
    Selection works on the level of the genes. Dying without procreating can still be advantageous if doing so means that enough of your relatives survive, for example. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kin_selection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kin_selection

amunozo 19d ago

Is this backed by some anthropological real world examples, or are you just extrapolating theories?

hermitcrab 19d ago
I read it in an article that was talking about the application of game theory to biology/evolution and I believe it is well supported by evidence. But I can't remember the source.
hermitcrab 19d ago
[dead]

HarHarVeryFunny 19d ago

What animal species often offers males only one chance of mating ?! It's common among animal species for males to fight over females, but it's highly uncommon for them to fight to the death, because that is not evolutionary adaptive - it risks the individual as well as the genetic diversity of the group/species (and evolution is selecting for survival of the species, not the individual).

hilariously 19d ago
obligate male death happens, but usually in things like spiders after mating, so there's a few examples for you
- HarHarVeryFunny 19d ago
  Fighting to the death and mating are not the same! There are a number of species where the female eats the male after mating - examples such as praying mantis and octopus. Both octopus males and females die after mating, the female after having protected the eggs, so it makes sense that she sometimes eats the male too (who is going to die anyway). But, examples like this are relatively rare, and for species specific reasons.
  - lightedman 19d ago
    "What animal species often offers males only one chance of mating ?!" "Fighting to the death and mating are not the same!" Your original question and your current statement are in confliction. Pick one.
    - HarHarVeryFunny 19d ago
      > If you are a male and you only get one chance at mating, you will probably fight to the death This is the comment I was responding to. The question was about pre-mating death matches between males, not post-mating snacking behavior of females.
articulatepang 19d ago
> evolution is selecting for survival of the species, not the individual This is very wrong. Evolution is selecting for the total reproductive fitness of genes, and to a slightly lesser extent, individuals. There’s no mechanism that helps the process of evolution select for the survival or reproduction of the species. See any recent textbook on evolutionary biology, or read Dawkins, or even Darwin. I don’t know where you got this idea but it’s exactly wrong.
- HarHarVeryFunny 19d ago
  > There’s no mechanism that helps the process of evolution select for the survival or reproduction of the species The "mechanism" is just the process of evolution itself, and how it plays out in practice, e.g. via punctuated equilibrium. Over shorter timespans the gene pool of a breeding population incrementally drifts according to the success of individual genetics, but then once in a while, over multiple generations, something in the environment (disease, food, competition, etc) may change quickly and the gene pool as a whole, not just that of individuals, is thereby tested, with accumulations of previously benign changes sometimes suddenly becoming critical. In this way evolution is acting on the entire gene pool - of the species or more correctly of that interbreeding sub-population. Success in evolution, the ability of the species as a whole to adapt and compete, also requires genetic diversity, not only to avoid inbreeding, but also to provide species level resilience, and species level ability to quickly adapt. e.g. It seems that the success of sexual reproduction is because it is a way to "game the game" by increasing genetic diversity and therefore improve along these axis of resilience and fast adaptation. There are also social species, such as ourselves, where the social group becomes port of the individuals environment, and genetics best-fitted-to-the-environment becomes a group dynamic.
  - robocat 19d ago
    Nothing about evolution feels sensible or right: and the vast majority of people have severe misunderstandings about how it works (for example the Darwin awards are highly misleading). Even science reporting is often highly misleading[0]. Intuition is not trustworthy for this topic, and neither is our ambient knowledge. and one group ate their dead relatives’ brains at funerals so consistently that they gave themselves a mad cow type disease called kuru, which killed a large percentage of their population and then, within a few generations, evolved a genetic mutation[1] that protects against it, one of the fastest cases of natural selection ever documented in humans Referencing the Wikipedia article on kuru which references this paper: https://researchonline.lshtm.ac.uk/id/eprint/4514/1/nejmoa0809716.pdf https://researchonline.lshtm.ac.uk/id/eprint/4514/1/nejmoa08... The suggested evolution is: * there is one ancestor with a gene that protects against kuru. * children and mothers without that ancestor often die from kuru * children of that ancestor have a much higher chance of survival * eventually everyone is a child of that ancestor * any children of that ancestor that didn't get the protective gene also eventually die out The gene is selected for. There are no population effects. The key part in the paper is where they mention adult men with the gene, because they are measuring the counterfactual of the many males that died because they didn't have that gene (males that ate brains as young kids but then died because they didn't have the gene from that ancestor). The paper is hard to understand in part because of the confounding effects of males not eating the brains. Plus the confounder of stopping cannibalism in 1960. The idea of "Group selection" is fundamentally wrong - regardless of how sensible the belief feels. Anybody using the words "group selection" is indicating their belief system, and they usually then have biased narratives to 'support' their belief. [0] horrifically incorrect sciencedaily link in Wikipedia. [1] We don't fucking evolve genetic mutations
hermitcrab 19d ago
>evolution is selecting for survival of the species, not the individual I believe that is wrong. Selection works on the level of the individual and their genes. Dawkins covered this extensively in at least one of his books. Any professional biologists care to comment?
- HarHarVeryFunny 19d ago
  I think it's most accurate to say that selection works at the level of genes (or combinations of genes), not of individuals, and of course many individuals of a species will share some/most of their genetics. You can tell it as a story (easier to teach) of individual success in surviving and having children, which isn't wrong, but it's also not the big picture.
- int_19h 18d ago
  Selection works on the level of the genes. Dying without procreating can still be advantageous if doing so means that enough of your relatives survive, for example. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kin_selection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kin_selection