Re: Why don't male nipples work?
- From: Guy A Hoelzer <hoelzer@xxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 6 Jun 2007 14:47:29 -0400 (EDT)
[Big snip]
in article f404h4$1ott$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, DK at
dk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote on 6/3/07 9:30 PM:
Lets just forget the pseudo-philisophical spandrels and get back
to the concrete issue at hands. What could those constraints to
adaptation be?
Facts:
1. In virtually all mammals, only females lactate.
2. It is exceedingly easy to make males lactate
(couple mutations).
AFAIK, there are no known constraints (and it's not even easy
to come up with any possible one) given that evolution had
managed far more demanding tricks. So the much more
parsimonious answer would be that either lactating males is
a deleterious trait, or, if it is not, that the original premise that it
is advantageous is false.
Thanks for your answer. I wonder if anyone else can think of possible
constraints (fitness costs, developmental/mechanistic) on lactation by
mammalian mammals. I personally doubt the claim of pure fitness costs here.
For one thing, this has not held back the evolution of lactation in
mammalian females. Maybe I am missing some fitness valley issue regarding
mammals, but my own background in parental care and sociality in fishes,
which is FAR more variable than it is in mammals, suggests to me that some
sort of constraints exist for mammals that do not exist for fishes.
Guy
.
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