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From: hkhenson@cup.portal.com (H Keith Henson)
Newsgroups: alt.sex,sci.bio
Subject: Re: reproductive stragegy and human behavior
Message-ID: <16359@cup.portal.com>
Date: 28 Mar 89 23:26:37 GMT
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Dr Mark C. Anderson manderse@orion.cf.uci.edu in responding to a series
pointed out that the literature supports a number of ideas in 
behavioral ecology/evolution.  I agree.  Not only do different species use
different strategies, but the same one can use variation over time and
space.  If anything, I suspect that humans have evolved to use a variety of
reproductive strategies.  However, some consistancy has been observed
from the spotty human evolutionary record and some tentative extrapolations.
The lastest theory of how we and or closest relative (the chimp) diverged
discuss *provisioning*, the strategy used by birds to feed their young.
Taping male energies to obtain and feed the females high quality food (as
the forest environment changed to open grasslands) about doubled our 
ancestors reproduction capacity.  This seems to have led to such behaviour/ 
physiology as walking upright, and the family.  We still see occasional
behaviorial throwbacks as the "gang bang" (willing, not the rape variety)
which is a female chimp's way (and most likely our common ancestor's way)
of getting the males in the tribe to believe they had a stake in her baby.