288. Bitch: On the Female of the Species (5)
2 (46m 20s):
Yeah. That's called the upstart hypothesis. And you know, this, there's quite a lot of support for that, that, that, you know, that, that that's, you know, one of the things that like, you know, I was really shocked to discover is that, you know, even the idea of a sperm rice right, is slightly ridiculous. You know, this sort of idea that, you know, you know, an amount of Jackie lates and it's going to despair best sperms gonna win. And it's like the idea of a sort of, you know, you saying bolt a hundred, 800 meter sprints going on inside the woman she's powerless. You know what I mean? You know, females influenced that in loads of ways, you know, and there's this process called capacitation where I didn't even know this, the sperm don't even have the, where with all to swim all the way to the egg without being activated by, by the female, you know, by her and by the environment of the female for stock.
2 (47m 16s):
And, and, and, and the God, I'm so sorry, I'm like brain is, I just have, what was the question was, and the contractions of the, of the uterus and vagina that happened during orgasm, you know, propel the sperm towards the egg. You know, that seems like a, you know, it's a very reasonable theory.
1 (47m 45s):
Yeah. I remember that was a book in the mid nineties called the sperm wars. Now that I think back on it, it very much fits your model of this kind of male perspective on sex. The theory, I don't know how well it's held out is that there are different kinds of sperm. There's like the Michael felt super fast swimmer that's heading for the egg. And then there's like the warrior sperm that fights off other guys sperm. And then there's a third sperm that, that like surrounds the egg and protects it from other guy sperms while the Michael Phillips sperm dives in the, into the egg, something like that. And, and it's still, now that I think about it, it's, it's the woman just lying there. It's just a reception place, like a giant Olympic swimming pool for the sperms to have it out.
1 (48m 30s):
And, but I, I never know if that, if that was, you know, kind of replicated or how that fared with, are there really three different kinds of sperm and, you know, and there was something about when, when a guy gets cuckold, he wants to have sex with his partner as soon as possible to get his boys in there to fight out the other guy's all. But I didn't really follow what happened to that theory. After that,
2 (48m 52s):
I feel like the three span theory that's got to have been devised by a man. I'm really sorry. But I mean, there was a paper that came out a couple of years ago. Sorry, I shouldn't, again, I'm not fantastic, but I mean, really, but I mean, so there was a paper a couple of years ago that came out about human fertilization and they found that in the end, guess what it's not about who wins the race? It's the egg chooses in the, in, in this, this paper that looked like it was the egg that was selecting the sperm that, that penetrated. So, you know, female choice as proposed by Darwin would have shocked him. It doesn't just stop it, who she mates with before the act.
2 (49m 34s):
It continues all the way up until the moment of fertilization.
1 (49m 38s):
Okay. Another myth to bust the maternal instinct. I'm a father. I have an instinct for my kids. Do I have a paternal instinct? Why do we even have that idea about maternal instinct?
2 (49m 50s):
Well, I mean, you know, nothing think as old as the Hills, isn't it, there's one of the ones that Darwin, you know, I felt very sure about the idea that all females have this sort of mythical maternal instinct is, you know, created the idea that all mothers would the same, you know, there was no competition between them and no variants. And, you know, we just had this maternal instincts. And I think this was really fascinating because, you know, I was really interested in this myself because I, you know, I'm just, I'm one of those women that just never wanted to have kids, you know, I just, just, just never really, I just never wanted to, you know, and so I always sort of felt like I was probably bit of a freak. I didn't have maternal instinct. So those really interested in the subject, the subject, and I, you know, and I discovered that, you know, females, aren't born with a mythical maternal instinct.
2 (50m 41s):
First of all, being a mother is really difficult and there's a lot to learn and whether you're human or you're a baboon, you know, you may struggle with that learning process. And some mothers will be better than others. So, you know, I think with baboons Dean Altman study 40 a study has thrown a lot of light on, on, on baboon mothers. And I think it's something like the firstborn is 60% more likely to die than subsequent offspring, because it's just, there's a lot of challenges you've got to, you've got to learn if you're a baboon to be on the move, you know how to hold the baby for it to cycle, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So, number one, there's a whole load to learn.
2 (51m 21s):
Number two, this somewhat recently by Lauren O'Connell at Stanford, he found that he takes something like frogs and you, you know, frogs are often a candidate for nature's best dad. You know, these frogs that are really sort of beautiful fathers like yourself, I'm sure. You know, and, and, you know, and in a lot of cases, the females will just lay the eggs and shoe. Oh, you know, they're not doing anything. And it's the males that are saying, they're making sure the eggs are hydrated. And then looking after the tadpoles, even carrying them around on their back, you know, really lovingly, but in some species the males do at some species, the females do it, right.
2 (52m 3s):
So she's like, oh, this is really interesting. It's a way of looking at instinct, right? The, the instinct to, to nurture, you know, cause it seems to be, you know, everybody thinks that, you know, frog, frog brains are there, you know, the same elements as ours, just the ours is just a lot more complicated, right? So they're a great sort of model for her for evolution. And anyway, she found that basically that the architecture for nurturing is the same in males and females. It involves these gallon and neurons and, and it was exactly the same in males and females. And then Katherine DLAC, who's at Harvard, she published a couple of years ago. She found exactly the same thing in mice.
2 (52m 43s):
So she's pretty confident it'll be the same thing in humans. So, so it's not a maternal instinct that we're born with. It's a parental instinct that needs to get triggered. Right. And, and Catherine doula, she doesn't know what triggers it yet. She thinks it will be a complex system of internal and external cues. But, but it's it, she's, she's pretty confident that that males and female, you know, it's the same neuronal architecture that controls this behavior in males and females.
1 (53m 11s):
And then in terms of the so-called patriarchy, there's a lot of female dominated species. I loved your stories about the orcas and, and they had the, the dominant female Orca. That's a great story. Just this recount that a little bit a model for the anti patriarchy theory of evolution.
2 (53m 34s):
Yeah. I love the story of the Yorkers that basically everybody thought that orcas souped up dolphins based into the biggest member of the cetacean family. And they live in these family groups or pods. And it was originally thought that the pods were led by the males that much bigger and the females were there hiring well, it turns out the leaders of, of certainly the Southern residents that are just off the coast here in Seattle, the leaders are not only female they're the post-menopausal granny. So menopause is extremely rare in the animal kingdom. Humans were thought of as being women are thought of as being menopausal freaks for, for living beyond our reproductive shelf life.
2 (54m 18s):
And, but it turns out we're not alone. There are actually four species of tooth whale that also go through the metaphors. And, and the reason is is that, you know, it, it, the, the, these older females are the basic, the repositories for ecological wisdom that keep the hunting clan alive, you know, and orcas have got extraordinary brains and, and, you know, the fantastic memories and, and these older, old lady whales by, by stopping reproduction, halfway through life and focusing their attention on, on protecting and guiding their existing offspring and their offspring re by the dividends in the end that the, the continuing to reproduce and ending up basically competing with your daughters.
2 (55m 4s):
This is what it avoids, you know?
1 (55m 6s):
Right. So I mean the menopause,
2 (55m 9s):
But there were these things, sorry, carry on.
1 (55m 12s):
I'm just going to say your discussion of the theoretical models behind men, it to explain menopause. I mean, why don't you just drop dead the moment you can no longer reproduce well, because it isn't just your genes and your immediate offspring getting into the next generation. It's your offspring's offspring. And maybe offspring's your children's children's children. But after that, they probably get so much support from their immediate family and extended family up to you that you're no longer needed. It's a little bit like, why do we die at all? Why can't we just keep living for hundreds or thousands of years? And it's sort of a cost benefit analysis. I think that natural selection sort of calculates, right?
2 (55m 55s):
Yeah. Yeah. I think so. Yeah. I mean, there's, you know, there's natural selections, a fantastic statistician better than me that's for sure.
1 (56m 3s):
Yeah. Yeah. But this is what'd you call it it's the grandmother hypothesis or whatever that there is a role for grandparents and in supporting children and so forth.
2 (56m 13s):
Absolutely. And it was Kristin Hawkes who came up with that theory in the 1980s, either American or Canadian anthropologist, I can't remember. And, and interestingly, she didn't have any empirical data to support her theory, but it was studying the Southern residents that have been studied for 40 years. And there was this 40 years worth of data that supported her ideas and, and gave her sort of, sort of the, the empirical, you know, underpinning that the cheats so required because it turns out that if, if, if, if a male or mother dies before her 30th birthday, then he, or if a man loses his mother, he's four times more likely to die the following year if she's under 30.
2 (57m 2s):
So she's still reproductively active. But if she's, post-menopausal, he's 15 times more likely to die. And that's because he's investing by that stage. So much of her energy in, in helping him out. I mean, they, you know, they, they they're, the fit these older females, apparently wily old hunters and they catch, you know, certainly with a Southern resident when they catch a salmon, you know, they'll break it in half and they'll share that with their son. And, and so, and so this, this idea that females are, are living beyond their reproductive shelf life in order to support their existing offspring was, is supported by the Southern residents
