Female Lizards: Superbly Manipulative

sireenmalik writes "CNN is running a story, Battle of the sexes winner is a lizard. Now how many of you are being Lizarded like that? Guys take a break from your computers ... find out which 'fancy rocks' your girlfriend is thinking about?!?!? Now you know who really is the boss? ;)"

Comments

From the article:

[Bobulusman]

"This is the ultimate example of a female having her cake and eating it too...It would be like a human female who marries a short, dumpy rich guy and then has an affair with a muscular 20-year-old to have a handsome son who grows up in a mansion and goes to the best schools."

A cool article, but that author spent entirely too much time thinging about that analogy.

I find the fact that the females seem to be able to decide which male to produce a certain gender with very fascinating. Either the article is over simplified, or these lizards can do some really neat stuff.

Re:Getting back to biology for a moment...

[Simon Field]

In an egg-laying species, is there really more of an investment by the female in making large males?

Are male eggs larger than female eggs?

It seems to me that in this species, the burden of making a large male falls entirely on that male, who may never see his mother.

But this still only looks at half of the question.

Is there a benefit to producing small or weak females?