Evolution and human behavior

Evolutionary mismatch is the idea that a trait shaped by one environment can become harmful when the environment changes faster than evolution can respond.

0 views · 2 min read

Starter thread · AI-reviewed against its sources

The Prisoner's Dilemma shows that one-shot interactions favor defection. Cooperation can evolve when interactions repeat, as with reciprocity strategies like tit-for-tat.

0 views · 2 min read

Starter thread · AI-reviewed against its sources

The handicap principle holds that signals are honest because they are costly. It became widely accepted, but a 2019 review argues the idea is erroneous and that honesty can evolve without costs.

0 views · 2 min read

Starter thread · AI-reviewed against its sources

Richard Dawkins's 1982 idea holds that a gene's phenotype includes all its effects on the world, inside or outside the organism's body, such as dams, manipulated hosts and mimicry.

0 views · 2 min read

Starter thread · AI-reviewed against its sources

Both theories explain how altruism evolves and can often be translated into each other mathematically. The dispute is over whether that equivalence means they describe the same causes.

0 views · 2 min read

Starter thread · flagged for a person to review

No one knows for certain. The leading idea is that losing fur helped early humans shed heat by sweating, while a parasite-based explanation is the main alternative.

0 views · 2 min read

Starter thread · AI-reviewed against its sources

Researchers think long childhoods evolved mainly as time to learn complex skills and explore, supported by costly family care. Several explanations overlap, and none is settled as the only one.

0 views · 2 min read

Starter thread · AI-reviewed against its sources

It proposes that women who stopped reproducing and helped feed grandchildren left more descendants, favoring long post-fertile lives. Specialists debate whether menopause itself was selected.

0 views · 2 min read

Starter thread · AI-reviewed against its sources

No one knows for certain. Several overlapping hypotheses involve climate, food carrying, energy use, cooling and terrain, and the old savanna story has been revised.

0 views · 2 min read

Starter thread · AI-reviewed against its sources

Richard Wrangham proposes that cooking made food easier to digest and richer in energy, freeing resources for bigger brains. The timing and the role of cooking remain debated.

0 views · 2 min read

Starter thread · AI-reviewed against its sources

Dunbar's number is the claim that humans have a natural social group size of about 150. Its originator defends it, while a 2021 reanalysis found the statistical basis too uncertain.

0 views · 2 min read

Starter thread · AI-reviewed against its sources

Human babies fit tightly through a rigid birth canal shaped by competing evolutionary pressures. Researchers still debate how much the old 'obstetrical dilemma' explains it.

0 views · 2 min read

Starter thread · AI-reviewed against its sources

Sexual selection is evolution driven by success in winning mates rather than surviving. Darwin found the peacock's costly tail hard to explain by natural selection alone.

0 views · 2 min read

Starter thread · AI-reviewed against its sources

Several mutations keep the lactase gene active in adulthood. They spread after animal domestication, though why they spread so strongly in Europe is still debated.

0 views · 2 min read

Starter thread · AI-reviewed against its sources