More evidence that girls are better:
This week's issue of Nature has an article about how pollution increases the probability of girls being born in that area. In addition,
"Research shows that natural disasters and crises such as terrorist attacks can increase the probability that a newborn is female."
Why would this be?
According to the article, there are two possiblities:
1. "This is thought to be the safer reproductive bet, as girls are likely to grow up and have a few children of their own. Boys are a more risky venture: they could father dozens of children, or none at all."
OR
2. Boys are the weaker sex: "...some scientists speculate that Y-chromosome sperm, which will produce boys, are weaker than X-chromosome sperm, and therefore more susceptible to environmental stresses. But that has not actually been proven..."
I venture a third option:
3. GIRLS ARE SMARTER, PRETTIER, and REQUIRE FEWER RESOURCES, therefore are better able to survive and overturn challenging circumstances.
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4 comments:
Be nice to us. We're fragile.
I should probably actually read the article but I'm just basing this off the quotes in the post.
I think the first argument is stated stupidly. It's not that girls in general will grow up and "have a few children of their own." That sort of makes it sound like they don't even need males to do it.
It is more that it is possible to maintain the population with only a few males and lots of females, but not the other way around. Females are the limiting factor in reproduction.
Also in any population, it shouldn't matter if some of the males father "dozen of children" and some father "none at all." Assuming a certain degree of genetic diversity, it should all even out in the end, the same as if each male had the average number of children.
I like argument #3 the best anyway.
Ariel, I was thinking the same thing you just said about point #1 - I think that's what they meant and they didn't word it well.
Or they're stupid.
Hopefully it'll be us and not them repopulating the earth after a catastrophe. You and mwz are already doing a pretty good job of that by the way. Keep up the good work. Make smart babies. Then give one to us so we can have smart babies too. Except give it to us when it's about 18 so we don't have to actually raise it. We want to take the lazy approach to parenthood. Yeah that sounds good.
I feel extremely good about the post...especially after the rage I was in about the state of women's rights at lunch.
(I'm not a stalker even though I post comments on here a lot)
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