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Comment by fho | Hacker News Reader

Even national geographic documentaries are probably "lies" ... I just had the chance to get some basic insights in to evolutionary biology ... and boy is bloody mauling and devouring of prey just the tip of the iceberg.

Intraspecies rape and infanticide is pretty common out there. (Look up the penis of drakes (male ducks) and why it looks the way it does at some point)

Siblings competing for food with only a small percentage surviving.

The female tit (the bird ... not what you think) basically cheats so much that there is a possibility that none of the offspring is actually of the male that feeds them ...

The list goes on and on and on ...

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> The female tit (the bird ... not what you think) basically cheats so much that there is a possibility that none of the offspring is actually of the male that feeds them ...

Pretty sure "cheating" and infidelity are largely human concepts. That's normal and natural behaviour for many species.

> "cheating" and infidelity are largely human concepts

It is normal behavior, yes. But it comes at the expense of the cheated on party. The term here is "parental investment" and is roughly how much energy a party has to invest in the offspring.

If the male tit builds the nest and provides food for offspring that is genetically not his it puts it at a disadvantage and it is definitely exploited by the female.

Again, "exploited"? Using that word in the context seems very... Off. It's not like the female tit is choosing to "exploit" the male. They're literally programmed to do that.

Think about it. In many species there is unequal parental employment. That's just how nature works. Is it really "exploitation" in the human sense of taking advantage of someone else?

>> Is it really "exploitation" in the human sense of taking advantage of someone else?

Yes. Obviously. And whether or not the exploitation is "programmed" is irrelevant. After all everything is programmed.

But. If we're observing as humans and it appears to us that the one creature is taking advantage of another, surely that's just our interpretation from a very limited understanding of their world?

I have no idea where I'm going with this, but that phrasing still seems off to me.

OT, but your usernames have a neat synchronicity.

Human behavior is no more complicated than that of anything else living. We just have more complicated ways to justify our actions.

And similar means to justify our distaste for some actions, as evidenced in this thread.

I don't think I understand your objection. You can model a lot of human and animal preferences fairly simply, based on axiomatic preferences like "wanting to survive and propagate your genes". Unwitting parental investment in a gene pool you don't share runs counter to this fairly basic and well-founded definition of utility, and it's under this premise that words like "exploit" are used.

Just upthread, "rape" is used in the animal context too. You could similarly apply your argument to that behavior, claiming that the term has moral baggage that's uniquely human, but I think it'd be just as wrong-headed.

I remember reading about some sort of project that was analogizing the economy to nature and talking about balance and I nearly blurted out that there is balance in nature because so much stuff dies all the time. People who want to make the economy more fair naturally want to do it without the equivalent of stuff dying all the time. But nature is not a good analogy for that. Nature as a whole is beautiful and tends toward balance, but it comes at a huge cost to individual participants.

Crazy how this topic on drowning led me to your comment and led me down a rabbit hole where I am now ordering The Evolution of Beauty, Prum and The Handicap Prinicple, Amotz. Thank you for this comment

Nice! "Animal Behavior: An Evolutionary Approach, Alcock" and "Evolution, Ridley" were mentioned in the seminars if you want to put some more books on the list :-)

What opened my eyes to all of this is when I saw a video of a seal raping a penguin. I knew nature was brutal, but that was an aspect I had never considered. Then I started noticing more and more information about it. Made me appreciate humans far more.

"(Look up the penis of drakes (male ducks) and why it looks the way it does at some point)"

Not to one-up you, but anyone who's at it anyway, also look up the platypus mating behavior. Spoiler: it involves 4-headed penises.

Another one - pretty much all nature footage doesn't come with quality (or any) sound. Nature documentaries are full of foley sound.

> Even national geographic documentaries are probably "lies"

That's exactly what the OP said.

If you ever watched Nat Geo tapes in grade school from the 80s, things were much more graphic (and interesting and informative IMO). Somehow Western society has become so sensitive to depictions of violence that even educational films regarding nature are effectively whitewashed.

Our reluctance to produce informative graphic media has given people an unrealistically optimistic view of nature and life. This has warped social values and policy to our detriment.

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