Thursday, April 1, 2010
Evolution and Our Behavioral Bias
This morning did not start perfect, had been suffering from some throat issues, did not get good parking spot at work, but turned out to be very thought provoking since I read the Following article: Can Animals Be Gay? in NYT. This article discusses and challenges some of our biases on thinking about animal as well as our own behaviors and underlying assumptions. For my impatient and sound-bite consuming FB friends (who do not have time to read the original article) I’ll summarize some thoughts here.
1. Striking observation: In a Laysan albatross (Big Birds) colony in Hawaii, which are famously monogamous for life, one third of the couples have been found to be two-female pair. Why didn’t we found this before? Because male and female birds look same and nobody actually used genetic experiments to sex the pairs!!
2. This brings the second point about our behavior: We assumed that the bird-couples are male and female couples. Because, there is moral bias among common people, and in the scientific community, there is no discernable evolutionary advantage of spending efforts in a non-off-spring producing behavior; therefore, genes for these traits will be removed from the population. Any same-sex mating behavior that has been reported has been always considered as an aberration. In fact, the scientist who reported these results was asked many times if she was gay!!
3. Therefore, a fundamental concept of biology that evolutionary process removes any genes are not helpful for survival in the particular environment is being questioned.
4. The other question is why we, humans, are so biased? We cannot tolerate imperfections; we always cringe for order; everything has to fit to our grand-all-explaining theory; why do we have such moral superiority?
1. Striking observation: In a Laysan albatross (Big Birds) colony in Hawaii, which are famously monogamous for life, one third of the couples have been found to be two-female pair. Why didn’t we found this before? Because male and female birds look same and nobody actually used genetic experiments to sex the pairs!!
2. This brings the second point about our behavior: We assumed that the bird-couples are male and female couples. Because, there is moral bias among common people, and in the scientific community, there is no discernable evolutionary advantage of spending efforts in a non-off-spring producing behavior; therefore, genes for these traits will be removed from the population. Any same-sex mating behavior that has been reported has been always considered as an aberration. In fact, the scientist who reported these results was asked many times if she was gay!!
3. Therefore, a fundamental concept of biology that evolutionary process removes any genes are not helpful for survival in the particular environment is being questioned.
4. The other question is why we, humans, are so biased? We cannot tolerate imperfections; we always cringe for order; everything has to fit to our grand-all-explaining theory; why do we have such moral superiority?
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