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From: andy@rocky.STANFORD.EDU (Andy Freeman)
Newsgroups: sci.bio,soc.men,soc.women,sci.misc
Subject: Is duck rape "natural"? (was Re: Rape a reproductive advantage?)
Message-ID: <969@rocky.STANFORD.EDU>
Date: 17 Jan 88 03:42:14 GMT
References: <517@gtx.com> <248@nancy.UUCP> <6852@ihlpa.ATT.COM>
Reply-To: andy@rocky.stanford.edu (Andy Freeman)
Distribution: na
Organization: Stanford University Computer Science Department
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In article <6852@ihlpa.ATT.COM> you write:
>    Second, I'm sorry to be a poor sport, but I am kind of skeptical
>of coercive duck mating behavior.  Where was this documented?
>How hard did the female fight?  If it were a violent fight resulting
>in broken feathers, it would hardly be an evolutionary advantage.

In the cases I'm familar with (friend observed the behavior), there
is no apparent evolutionary advantage, nonetheless, the male ducks
gang-rape a female duck until she escapes or they get bored, long
after she dies.  I think the flock size is stable.  I'm sorry, I
don't have a published reference or a learned explanation.  (It
happens in Northfield, Minnesota.)

Why don't people believe that animals and humans have behaviors
that aren't advantageous?

-andy
-- 
Andy Freeman
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