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100 - Do playfights train meerkats for the real fights, or are they just fun? 200 - What was the youngest recorded age for allolactation? 300 - There is no such thing as a truly altruistic act said this 18th century philosopher. 400 - But in standing sentinel duty, offering food to begging pups, teaching young and other altruistic acts, non-parental meerkats seem to have disproved his belief. In truth, it seems to be that meerkats and other altruistic species are benefiting in some way from their "altruism". By helping to rear enough of one's relatives, an animal can help pass on as many (or more than) these as from rearing their own young. What is is they are hoping to pass on? 500 - In a study published in Science in Oct. 2003, it was shown that within 15 bird and 3 mammal species tested, altruistic helpers are better at distinguishing close from distant relatives and non-relatives in those species where they get the most benefit from helping relatives pass on their genes (i.e. you must make discriminations much better when you have more to gain). Name one of the bird and one of the mammal species studied. |
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For 100, what is we were kung fu fightin', paws like lightnin' .... ; pups just wanna have fun? For 200, what is indecently young but I can't remember excatly? For 300, who was Thomas Hobbes (but I thik Isadi that before and was wrong)? For 400, what is, as a girl I knew in college used to say, their demon seed? For 500, who's your cousin now, Jt? |
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For 100 What is play fights don't train them for real fights For 200 What is 9 months For 300 Who is Immanuel Kant For 400 What is genes For 500 What are Chimpanzees and ravens 7:05 eastern time Had to guess on some of these |
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7:39 EST for 100 - what is it provides training for combat skills needed later, but it is still fun? for 200 - what is 9 months (know the article, but couldn't find the whole text)? for 300 - who is Immanuel Kant? for 400 - what are genes?\ for 500 - what is the white-throated bee eater and meerkats? |
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Answers 100 - Do playfights train meerkats for the real fights, or are they just fun? What is the reason for meerkat play remains a mystery? 200 - What was the youngest recorded age for allolactation? 9 months What is 9 months? 300 - There is no such thing as a truly altruistic act said this 18th century philosopher. Who is Immanuel Kant? 400 - But in standing sentinel duty, offering food to begging pups, teaching young and other altruistic acts, non-parental meerkats seem to have disproved his belief. In truth, it seems to be that meerkats and other altruistic species are benefiting in some way from their "altruism". By helping to rear enough of one's relatives, an animal can help pass on as many (or more than) these as from rearing their own young. What is is they are hoping to pass on? What are genes (or demon seed)? 500 - In a study published in Science in Oct. 2003, it was shown that within 15 bird and 3 mammal species tested, altruistic helpers are better at distinguishing close from distant relatives and non-relatives in those species where they get the most benefit from helping relatives pass on their genes (i.e. you must make discriminations much better when you have more to gain). Name one of the bird and one of the mammal species studied. meerkats dwarf mongooses kookaburras scrub jays western bluebirds Australian magpies Seychelles warbler pied kingfisher Scoring Tosca-Quirkie - 650 (Excellent answer for 300 so you got half points. Although he was a 17th-century philosopher, Thomas Hobbes' account of human nature as self-interested cooperation has proved to be an enduring theory in the field of philosophical anthropology and is probably a more accurate explanation of meerkat behavior as well!) Squirrelly - 1000 points Jtutton - 1400 points Winner! Thank you all for playing! |
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Thank you sister Ballet for giving me some points for my smart alecky answers. See Jt, 500 points to knowing your kinship tables. |
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Woo Hoo! It's been a long time since I got to play and post questions! Loving, I am still confussled by kinship tables, and I'm not even sure what it had to do with 500. Maybe the long weekend left my brain fuzzy. Ballet, dear, I dug and dug but couldn't find the whole text for question 200's paper, where was it? |
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Crudely put, the closer the relationship, the more you are willing to risk: ie you will risk more for a sibling than a cousin, and more for a first cousin than a second cousin, etc. This is proportional to the percentage of genes you have in common. So you need to know if someone is your second or third cousin, or not a cousin at all, to determine what is reasonable to risk or sacrifice. |
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| | From: eruth66 | Sent: 12/9/2008 6:49 PM |
ddddss Looking forward to your questions today Jane. I'm sure they will all be about Zaphod! Woohoo!!! ddddss Loyalkat Sophie |
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To put Tosca-Quirky's kinship tables another way, there is "Hamilton's Rule" or as it is sometimes called: To die for two brothers: The kin selection revolution started in a pub in the mid 1950s. Biologist J. B. S. Haldane was asked if he would give his life to save his brother. A few scribbled calculations later, he provocatively replied that he would only die for at least two brothers, or eight cousins. Why? Because a gene coding for such altruism can only survive if it leaves enough copies of itself in relatives. Human siblings share on average half of their genes, and cousins one-eighth. Hence, two siblings, or eight cousins equal one self. The concept was published by Haldane in 1955, but was generalised and mathematically formalised by William Hamilton in 1964. The revolution ignited. Group selection mechanisms, proposed in particular by Vero Wynne-Edwards, no longer appeared to explain altruism. The individual came to be seen as the protagonist of natural selection. Soon the gene took its place. Bodies could be regarded as merely the genes' way of making more genes, as famously expressed in 1976 by Richard Dawkins's metaphor of the selfish gene. In two ground-breaking books, The Insect Societies (1971) and Sociobiology (1975), Edward O. Wilson launched a new research programme that promised to explain the social behaviour of all animals under a single unifying theory, with kin selection at its core. Sociobiologists faced accusations of racism and sexism, because of their then-radical views on human nature. Scientists such as Stephen Jay Gould entered the fray, arguing that there was more to evolution and social behaviour than genes maximising their own fitness. Today, the majority of behavioural ecologists, knowingly or not, follow the gene-centred sociobiological approach. Wilson, however, has now changed flag, turning against what he helped create. |
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Alas, Jane, i must confess i got 200 from a past jeopardy game. |
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