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Sex (Rule)s (lemmy.world)

submitted 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 32 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (2 children)

There's a lot of evolutionary processes that don't have to do with having more offspring, but increasing the viability of less offspring. Having kids, no matter the species, is a very costly affair. You could argue that mate selection generally reduces the number of offspring, but increases the viability.

I've read a hypothesis (very much unproven) that having some gay members of a species increases the viability by having more people to care for the offspring without being in mate competition. It's called the gay uncle hypothesis

[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago

The grandma effect of manopause still applies whether or not we evolved with reproductive thresholds in order to secure that advantage.

So whether or not the gay demographic originally served the population by providing more adults to kids, it certainly does now.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago

I like this