Dragaera

Dzur and Sex

Mon Jan 26 14:57:29 PST 2004


On Mon, 26 Jan 2004, Jerry Friedman wrote:

>
> --- Philip Hart <philiph at SLAC.Stanford.EDU> wrote:
>
> > (which is what I would pararectally expect for an artificially evolved
> > species).
> >
> > In case someone hasn't mentioned it, differences in size between male
> > and female members of species is apparently strongly inversely related
> > to the degree of monogamousness (monogamosity?).
>
> Monogamy?
>
> Among birds, this is a strong relation but not a universal one.
> In birds of prey, females are bigger than males--very noticeably, in
> falcons and bird-eating hawks--but they're monogamous.

Fascinating - is there an evolutionary just-so-story?  Hmm, birds have xx
males and xy females, right?

Also I guess one should distinguish between monogamy,
pair-bonded-for-life, and not-sleeping-around-at-all.  I vaguely thought
that some p-b-f-l birds turn out to have a surprising degree of adultery.
In fact I thought p-b-f-l actually had turned out to be really rare, even
in birds, except for albatrosses or something, so ignore me.

Anyway, it should be noted that jhereg (and maybe orca?) are dimorphic in
the hawk mode.  SKZB is really on top of his universe.