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Human Males Evolve At a Faster Pace Than Females
Tisha_AH writes "A report by the Whitehead Institute indicates that the human Y chromosome present in males is evolving at a furious pace. Across the chromosome there can be as much as a 33% difference within humans alone. The portions of the chromosome evolving fastest are related to sperm production."
Al least some scientific data ;-)
Very seriously, I had a feminist girlfriend that wouldn't believe a child sex was defined by the spermatozoid. According to her the female genitals were as much responsible for the sex of the child.
I guess this article explains everything, she needs more evolution in order to understand those advanced concepts ;-))
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
Mod the whole article flamebait. The headline plays with the common association between "evolution" and "improvement" in order to gather angry responses and its fair share of taunting.
...at what they are looking for in a mate.
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Contrary to a widely held scientific theory that the mammalian Y chromosome is slowly decaying or stagnating, new evidence suggests that in fact the Y is actually evolving quite rapidly through continuous, wholesale renovation.
If I had a nickel for every time I had a nickel, I'd be richcursive!
You're correct, males do tend to generate more sperm than females...
-Matt
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Males are not an independent population. And individuals don't evolve, so the notion of evolving males is silly.
Evolution is something that happens in a population, not in an individual. The female part of out population likely benefits just as much from the continuous changes to the Y chromosome as the male part of the population. Evolutionary speaking, that is. It's unlikely any individual would really care.
"Darwin Award" winners are pretty overwhelmingly male.
>The cynical among us might say that we're finally catching up...
Why is shit like this tolerated? If this was said about women then it would be sexist and marked as a troll. But when its about men, its "Interesting." Sadly, making fun of boys and men is standard fare in American society. Every sitcom and commercial has the smart wife and the idiot husband dynamic where the husband cant do something simple but the wife can.
As an adult this doesnt bother me, I just feel sorry for kids growing up today believing this garbage and we wonder why so many of our boys end up as dropouts and criminals. Perhaps society shouldnt be painting them as morons 24/7 and let them develop some self-esteem.
It's not just that, but look at the engineering here...
Testicles sit outside of the body (because sperm can't handle internal body temperatures for too long), so they get exposed to all kinds of fun stuff: radical temperature extremes, physical abuse, etc. Males generate new sperm all the time from scratch, and in huge frickin' numbers. Sperm cells are built to compete and operate at high energy, requiring high sugars just to survive (after all, they're literally shot into the vagina - or in most /.'ers cases, into something else).
Women OTOH have all of their eggs tucked inside, deep in the abdomen, where they stay in a nice, consistent environment. IIRC, they also have all of their eggs present in their body when they are born. Women only drop like one egg a month (excepting twins, fertility drugs, etc), so there's no competition or rush for the egg cell as it drifts slowly down the uterus - either into oblivion or fertilization.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
It could simply be taken as a form of compliment - specifically, by way of self-deprecation. It's not uncommon, nor considered problematic in many cultures. (As one who has not yet subscribed to any particular culture, I have no opinion as to whether it offends me or not.)
-- thinkyhead software and media
Exactly. There are far more lonely men than women and women are lonely often because of their own decision and not because they cannot find anyone. There are also very successful males who have got some kind of a harem. Hugh Hefner is a prime example.
The old joke demonstrates this pretty well:
Boy: I have a dick, and you dun have!
Girl: My mother said, when I grow up, I can have as many as I want
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
This has been known for a long time. It is called "male driven evolution". This happens because in humans (and most animals) the cells producing sperms divide about 6 times more than the egg cells. And guess what: studies in a human gene that has a homologue in both X and Y chromosomes, showed that (you guessed it) the Y homologue changes about 6 times faster than the X one.
Did I say old news? 1947 old:
“The primordial oocytes are mostly if not all formed at birth, whereas spermatogonia go on dividing throughout the sexual life of a male. So if mutation is due to faulty copying of genes at a nuclear division, we might expect it to be commoner in males than females.”
“ we should expect higher mutability in the male to be a general property of human and perhaps other vertebrate genes.”
J. B. S. Haldane. 1947. The mutation rate of the gene for haemophilia and its segregation ratios in males and females. Ann. Eugen. 13:262-271.
I don't mind dating a girl that has been with everybody, as long as she had a good shower afterwards.
testicle size in simians is correlated with female permissiveness. such that, in chimpanzees, where a female in estrus is pretty much a gangbang, chimpanzees males have evolved humongous testicles. they need to, because in such a situation, the only strategy available to the male to ensure his genetic continuance is to simply overwhelm other male's sperm with sheer ejaculate volume
meanwhile, in highly monogamous simians who mate for life, such as gibbons, the testicles are tiny. there's simply no need for so much ejaculate volume, its a waste of resources. she's not going anywhere
interestingly enough, human males have intermediate sized testicles, owing to the fact that human females are semi-monogamous/ semi-polygamous
however, i've always wondered why testicles appeared on the outside of the male mammalian body. it seems a ridiculous vulnerability and i've never heard a good explanation as to why. for example, dolphins aren't swimming around with their balls out: the need to be streamlined. of course sperm need a lower temperature to develop, but thats an effect, not a cause. i'm saying wouldn't it be better to have your testicles inside your body and evolve sperm that develop at a higher temperature? its pretty ridiculous to have such an important organ dangling outside unprotected. i never understood why
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
"One can only hunt deer for so long before an accident befalls one's genitals."
I think I saw that video on YouTube!
If the Y contained nothing, then males would inherit exactly zero traits from their fathers.
That bit is wrong... fathers provide 23 chromosomes in total, just like mothers. Daughters inherit plenty of traits from their fathers, after all, and they don't have a Y chromosome.
I like basketball!!1!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Mod parent down. The point he made is entirely wrong.
According to the grandparent's hypothesis, genes would mutate more frequently in men than in women. Genes that are shred between the genders would mutate more in men than women, but in each child a mixture of the more-mutated and less-mutated genes would be provided by the two parents and so they would average out. The genes only present in the male (i.e. on the Y chromosome) would not have this averaging effect and so would contain a higher total level of mutation. X chromosomes inherited from the male parent in women would be more likely to be mutated than the ones inherited from the mother. Y chromosomes do not appear in females, so they would only come from the father and would be subject to a greater amount of potential mutation. Multiply this by a few thousand generations, and you'd see a greater level of mutation in the Y chromosome than in the rest of the genome which is exactly what TFA says is seen
The grandparent produced a hypothesis that supported the observation. The next step according to the scientific method is to design a test that would contradict the grandparent's hypothesis but not the observed evidence. Not simply to say 'mod parent down'.
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Sorry you got modded down.. I wholeheartedly agree with this.
Like you, I could care less now.. but you are correct - ever since the old school women's liberation movement (which was a good and necessary thing) the balance his shifted so that women aren't equals, they are male superiors. Most advertising portrays females as the wise and NECESSARY figureheads of families while men are bumbling with 0 (or equally idiotic) focus. I'm very fortunate in my marriage.. but the occasional times we bump heads, why is the supposition that I'm automatically the one who's wrong?
The cynical and sexist side of me thinks that this is because women generally still feel inadequate in some capacity.
But yea.. factor in TV advertising, divorced moms who typically end up with custody ranting about how evil fathers/men are and doctors prescribing away 'boys will be boys' (generally at the request of the mom), future generations will have some serious genetics to do battle with.
No wonder males are evolving faster than women. Survival of the fittest.. and men are no longer fit in the battle of the sexes.
TV panders to women because TV is all about selling advertising. Advertising is all about selling crap. Who does the day to day shopping? Unless you're a single guy it's probably a woman. For most goods, advertisers value the eyeballs of women far more than those of men. This is why nearly every TV program that isn't a guy's show (sports/fishing/woodworking/etc) must be palatable to women. If women won't like it it's not on TV.
"Liechtenstein is the world's largest producer of sausage casings, potassium storage units, and false teeth."
Evolution doesn't give us the best possible solution, just one which was "good enough" at some point in time. As a result we have spines which hurt, wrists which break easily when we try to protect us from a fall, women who become infertile long before they would lose the strength to carry a child, etc.
Most advertising portrays females as the wise and NECESSARY figureheads of families while men are bumbling with 0 (or equally idiotic) focus.
Yeah, let me tell you how great it is to be constantly reminded that my place is in the home. It makes me feel so SUPERIOR. It's a miracle that I can manage to hold down a software development job too, in which my undeniable superiority rakes in 70% as much as the man in the other cube. Thank God for that old school women's lib thing that is obviously no longer necessary.
Unless it's a non white person, then they can be as racist as they want. Just look at Chris Rock, his comedy is mostly white racist jokes.
Compliment by self-deprecation is fine. Compliment by half-the-human-race-deprecation is not.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
It's called self-deprecating humor. I'm a male, so I get to make fun of men. I'm also a white guy, so I can make fun of white guys. I've witnessed African-Americans making fun of the African-American stereotype, and guess what. It's funny. I've also witnessed women making fun of female stereotypes, and guess what. It's funny, too.
You should try it sometime yourself. Stop taking yourself, your race, your gender, your religion, your [whatever] so seriously. Ironically, most people respect folks more who are able to laugh at themselves. It's people like you are are "that guy" that no one wants to be around because they're so self-righteous.
I don't feel sorry for our children at all. I want my kids to have a healthy sense of humility and not be like you. And if you think that comments like these about one's own cultural groups are a contributing factor to society's ills, you really need to get a better perspective things.
In other words, man up, Nancy.
By and large, the idea than women earn less for equal work is incorrect these days. Yes, women earn less, but that's because they choose safer jobs on average (over 90% of workplace deaths are men), they are more likely to take extended periods of time away from their careers for child-rearing (in most places in the world, paternity leave is a pittance compared with maternity leave), they aren't as demanding when they ask for raises, they choose more pleasant indoor jobs at a higher rate than men do, they work fewer hours on average (men work more overtime on average and are more likely to be employed full-time), and other things of this nature. Once you control for factors like this - factors that boil down to women being less committed to their careers on average than men (who are viewed as the bread-winner and judged harshly if they can't provide for their families) you'll find that the sexes are about equal. Sure, you might put in equal work to your male peers, but other women who make different choices bring down the average salary for women. It's not discrimination, it's choice that causes women to earn less on average.
Look at it this way: if you really could get the same amount of work from a woman at only 70% the cost, who would ever hire men?