Hypothetical about mammals and mammaries

[infinite monkey]

Originally Posted by Aliantha

Would more men get breast cancer?

If that happened, they'd have eradicated it years ago.

[ZenGum]

Originally Posted by Clodfobble

The question is, what triggers the lactation in a man? In women, currently, hormones released by the placenta begin the series of events that ultimately lead to the woman's body knowing it is time to lactate. After that it is only a positive feedback loop that keeps it going--stop draining the boobs regularly, and the milk production will stop.

It wouldn't be very "selfish gene" of them if men's bodies started producing milk any time they saw any baby. Maybe the baby could produce a pheromone that the man's body would recognize as genetically his own. But that could lead to serious societal problems. Being able to hide or misidentify the father is one of women's evolutionary strengths.

In a tribal situation, it could well turn out that males - and maybe the females too - would breastfeed any young of their own tribe. It is to a genome's benefit to be generous to any reasonably closely related individual unless it is definitely not to that genome's benefit (as where lions often kill the cubs of other lions to enable the lionesses to start breeding again more quickly).

Originally Posted by Aliantha

Would more men get breast cancer?

That would have been cured by now.

ETA: I see one of my fellow cynics beat me to it.

[Aliantha]

If hormones in men changed, would that mean we'd have to put up with their moodiness for the whole month instead of just the other three weeks?

[ZenGum]

Maybe, but if men did lactate, they'd be forever boasting about how much and for how long.

[Aliantha]

Women already do that. It'd be nothing new.

[regular.joe]

Youse guys are way too smart. I'm not sure I want to get into the whole discussion thing. I like boobs just as much as the next guy. In fact my fav t shirt is all about not letting cancer steal second base. Lets just leave it that for the vast majority of the human race men and women are different, anatomically especially. I like these differences. I know that I"ve said this somewhere before on here, if my aunt had a dick she wouldn't be my aunt. If my uncle had boobs, I'm pretty sure he'd be the lead singer for Meat Loaf.

[Clodfobble]

Originally Posted by ZenGum

If BOTH parents can breast feed it would greatly change the "post-partum feeding problem". Feeding could be shared, greatly reducing the asymmetry in the amount of resources each parent must put into offspring.

No way, dude. We've had mechanical breast pumps and plastic bottles for decades. It is just as easy for the man to feed the baby. But then the woman sighs and says, "Oh, give me that," because everyone knows the man is no good at managing the baby anyway.

[ZenGum]

Yeah but if we'd had fifty million years of practice...

[ZenGum]

Oh and Ibica would probably be having an easier time of things.

[Ibby]

Ha! I picked a nice time to chime in.
I honestly can't get my mind around the way this would possibly evolve. Maybe I've just been reading too much Dawkins lately (he's going to be on Up with Chris Hayes next week!) but, after all he has to say about investment cost - that is to say, a female has to invest exponentially more resources into creating offspring, regardless of whether or not there is mothering involved, than a male - I can't really wrap my brain around why or how it would evolve. In fact I suspect it's quite possible that it did, at some point, emerge as a mutation, which was then soundly selected against. Only in monogamous animals where both parents raise the offspring would it possibly be an evolutionary advantage. Any male in a species where males currently don't assist in raising offspring, would be at an evolutionary disadvantage if it produced milk, not to mention that as Clod pointed out, there's no practical chemical mechanism for males to know there's a baby of their own about. It would only make sense in us social animals, and even then, I'm not sure what would be different about society except that, yeah, I wouldn't have to keep checking to make sure my breast forms don't keep peeking out of my shirt.

So I guess my take on the question is, it's kind of like asking, what if every human baby born from today onwards was born with fully functioning wings. It's a hypothetical that just could not reasonably happen, so any idea as to the effects would have to be pure conjecture AND would have absolutely no application to anything resembling reality.

I'm not knocking you for bringing it up, mind you! i'm just saying, like, the question itself gets sort of rejected by my brain as such an impossibility that it just doesnt matter.

[Ibby]

Originally Posted by regular.joe

...the lead singer for Meat Loaf.

Meat Loaf is the singer. That's his name. Well, his pseudonym at least.

also, yeah, if your aunt had a dick, she would still be your aunt. She would absolutely still be your aunt. If your one of your parents' brothers married a trans* lady, your aunt would have a dick and be your aunt. Trans* erasure is not your friend.

[ZenGum]

Ibram, interesting thoughts. Arguing that a scenario is impossible is a reasonable response.

Nevertheless, I disagree.
I imagine some combination of hormones and pheromones and physiological response to suckling could well provide a possible mechanism to stimulate lactation, and behaviour guided by imprinting could limit this to direct offspring.

Would it have an evolutionary advantage? Hard to say, in lots of situations it probably wouldn't, but we only need a few situations in which it did, for it to be preserved.

I get your point about relative investments, but that raises the issue of sexual selection, and females would have reason to prefer partners who showed more promise as providers for the young.

I can imagine it being useful in mostly monogamous species by reducing the burden on a single parent and allowing bigger broods, leading to faster population growth. Mutual suckling could be pleasurable and reinforce pair bonds.

I can imagine it being beneficial for tribe/herd species in both sharing nursing burden and reinforcing group cohesion.

I think it is possible and could well be selected for. I mean, it is less useless than the peacock's tail.

[Ibby]

Originally Posted by ZenGum

Ibram, interesting thoughts. Arguing that a scenario is impossible is a reasonable response.

Nevertheless, I disagree.
I imagine some combination of hormones and pheromones and physiological response to suckling could well provide a possible mechanism to stimulate lactation, and behaviour guided by imprinting could limit this to direct offspring.

Would it have an evolutionary advantage? Hard to say, in lots of situations it probably wouldn't, but we only need a few situations in which it did, for it to be preserved.

I get your point about relative investments, but that raises the issue of sexual selection, and females would have reason to prefer partners who showed more promise as providers for the young.

I can imagine it being useful in mostly monogamous species by reducing the burden on a single parent and allowing bigger broods, leading to faster population growth. Mutual suckling could be pleasurable and reinforce pair bonds.

I can imagine it being beneficial for tribe/herd species in both sharing nursing burden and reinforcing group cohesion.

I think it is possible and could well be selected for. I mean, it is less useless than the peacock's tail.

Ah, but that was sexually selected for. that's a whole 'nother ball game.
edit: oh! i missed the part where you brought sexual selection up yourself. I guess I still don't buy it. it's already physiologically possible... if it was evolutionarily advantageous, I still feel like it would already exist. Females in species where males help raise young already select for males that have an advantage there, and still in almost every species, the male investment in offspring is still lower. The idea, though, that we "only need a few situations in which it did for it to be preserved", I think, is wrong. Just the same way that the investment in eyes quickly drops to none in cave animals shows how reward for investment needs to be constant, and evolution doesn't save things just because they might be useful. Since the majority of mammals do not raise their young in pairs, it wouldn't reasonably be a trait all or most mammals share, only a few, and while any mammal could evolve to have lactating males as things stand now, they don't. Don't doesn't always mean could never, I guess - I can imagine a potential scenario in which, like seahorses, some sort of convoluted set of circumstances leads to a substantial increase in male investment, in which case i think the males would probably develop the ability to nurse, but mammals, to me, don't look like they're in much of a position to buck the trend there.

[Clodfobble]

I think the answer is that this would have to develop much earlier in the evolutionary cycle, not survive as a spontaneous mutation in an already very highly-developed species.

Male seahorses carry the babies to term after they are fertilized. So eons from now, when the seahorses have larger brains, legs, self-awareness, language, use of tools, and methods for preserving history so that society can be further advanced with each generation... then Zen can ask them how that co-parenting thing is going!

[infinite monkey]

Mammary, All alone in the moonlight
I can smile at the old days
I was beautiful then
I remember
The time I knew what happiness was
Let the mammary live again

Touch me, It's so easy to leave me
All alone with my mammary
Of my days in the sun
If you touch me
You'll understand what happiness is
Look a new day has begun...