Dragaera

Dzur and Sex

Wed Jan 28 15:41:42 PST 2004

--- Philip Hart <philiph at SLAC.Stanford.EDU> wrote:
> 
> 
> On Mon, 26 Jan 2004, Julie Alipaz wrote:
> 
> > there are two schools of thought 1) females are the bigger because of
> > reproductive issues.  They must feed a brood--take bigger prey, they
> > must incubate the clutch--bigger = more body heat.  that said, they
> > also believe 2) that it is a historical artifact of early avian
> > divergence.  But the first theory gets more respect.

Thanks!

> I'm trying to understand why 1) wouldn't apply more generally in
> predators.

Me too.
 
> Would this mean female raptors are scraping at the upper range of
> useful size, and male raptors are less likely to starve or break
> wings or graze trees by accident or something?  I guess birds have
> a more difficult design job than say cats...

I don't think so, because the smallest North American hawk, the
sharp-shinned hawk (which a Dragaeran wouldn't even consider a hawk)
has at least as much size dimorphism as the goshawk.

> I think Loiosh says Rocza is a better flier since she's bigger...

Funny, I've discussed this one on the Nabokov list too.  There's
a very rough trend that bigger birds fly slightly faster, but the
fastest birds are swifts, which are pretty small.  For stamina,
there's really no correlation.  To a first approximation, size
doesn't matter.  I doubt you heard it here first.

Of course, we have no idea what sexual dimorphism is like in jhereg
beyond the size difference.  I don't think we even know what color
they are.

Jerry Friedman

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