I’m new here and don’t know what to put in my profile. She/them, living in Aotearoa/New Zealand.

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 3rd, 2023

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  • liv@beehaw.orgtoScience@beehaw.orgChimpanzees Go Through Menopause, Too
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    11 months ago

    Thanks so much, I understand the hypothesis now!!

    And that article does show how it could map onto humans. For some reason I had been under the impression that early hominids did not necessarily have the females-as-strangers setup.

    It’s interesting to compare with elephants, who are matriarchal. The “Alice” of an asian elephant herd will often stop having kids (though, she biologically still can) so her daughters can have some, even though unlike Charlotte, her daughters are related to her so theoreticly it’s more of a Bob/Daniel situation.


  • liv@beehaw.orgtoScience@beehaw.orgChimpanzees Go Through Menopause, Too
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    11 months ago

    I feel like the stupidest person in the world because I still don’t see the difference between Bob and Alice and now I also don’t understand this part

    If Daniel has a child, Bob won’t have a new child, to avoid starving his grandchild.

    How does Bob do this? Why doesn’t he just menopause too? If menopause ensures more descendant survival wouldn’t they both do it?

    Why doesn’t Alice just die?

    The troupe still have to find enough food for her, how is that an evolutionary advantage to keep a non breeding member around?

    If something happens to Charlotte now the troupe cannot reproduce unless they go out and find a new female, but if something happens to Daniel then Bob can still reproduce with Charlotte. What is the advantage in that asymetry?

    Edit: I was puzzling over the Charlotte factor. Is it more that somewhere along the line the Charlottes of this world were killing the non-menopausal Alices? Because that kind of would make sense.

    Thank you so much for taking the time to try to explain it by the way. If you don’t feel like answering my latest round of questions that’s okay!














  • If I were to ask for salt for chips in a cafe or something, no problem. But in a proper restaurant, that would be the same as what @ScrollinMyDayAway@lemm.ee describes: it would mark me as some kind of philistine that can’t appreciate the chef.

    I’m fascinated by this stuff too! We share a language and consume a lot of your pop culture but there are still so many little things that are different.

    Eg “tuna noodle casserole” sounded super gross to me because of the language difference. Here, casserole = a thin, liquid stew with chunks of meat in it, cooked in a ceramic pot, and noodles = only Asian noodles (ramen, udon, etc). But it turns out it’s more like what we call a “pasta bake”, a totally normal dish.