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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Chuzzlewit who wrote (35152)	4/19/1999 12:24:00 AM
From: jbe	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 108807

Peace, Chuzzlewit...We do not disagree at all. (At least, not according to my animal behaviorist brother. He called tonight, and I took advantage of his call to read him our exchange.) If you recall, you objected to my original remark about lions, phrased thus: [Lions] practice infanticide, for reasons having everything to do with sex (that is, with perpetuating their genes). In my response, I said the following: I did not mean to imply that when he takes over a pride, the lion makes a conscious choice to kill all the offspring of his predecessor, with a clearly defined goal in mind. I then rather spoiled that by saying that many scientists in the field now believe that a lion commits infanticide "in order to" perpetuate his genes. Again, I omitted to qualify that -- what I should have said that many scientists in the field believe that the lion commits infanticide because, in their opinion, that is the best way he can perpetuate his genes. Hence, I accept (and from the outset would have accepted) your statement that: A male cat kills the offspring of other cats. The behavior has survival value because it enhances the proportion of the male's genes passed on to the next generation. By the way, my brother suggested yet another good explanation for the lion's behavior. The lion only kills the nursing cubs, not the weaned ones. He can't mate with the females as long as they are nursing. Another male could come along at any time, and bump him off just as he bumped off the previous King of the Pride. Time is of the essence, and he needs the females to come into estrus as soon as possible. So.... No teleology there, I hope. Yet we should bear in mind that the lion may actually have some sort of lion-thoughts, even though we cannot say so, because we cannot prove it... Joan