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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • trolske@feddit.detoScience Memes@mander.xyzDeadication
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    7 months ago

    Yeah, that’s exactly right.
    As for the second part, I’m not sure how to answer. Squeezing the partner is without a doubt adaptive, but squeezing anything that is roughly the same shape is a byproduct with no (strong) evolutionary pressure. Now, the question is whether functional necrophilia is adaptive or just a byproduct is very difficult to answer, but I lean towards byproduct.


  • trolske@feddit.detoScience Memes@mander.xyzDeadication
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    7 months ago

    Adaptive here means whether necrophilia occurs in order to still produce offspring, i.e. it’s ‘conscious’ (I use that term veeeery loosely here) or if it occurs just because the animals don’t recognize that the partner is dead.
    I remember a paper about a frog species (not sure if it was the one from the meme) where the males participated in necrophilia, but they basically tried to squeeze eggs out of anything they grabbed. Living female, dead female, stone, sponge. All the same.


  • trolske@feddit.detoScience Memes@mander.xyzDeadication
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    7 months ago

    Damn, I’m getting flasbacks from that. I had to make a presentation whether functional necrophilia in animals is adaptive during my master studies. I had to read so many papers discussing the details. Conclusion: not enough evidence to conclude it’s adaptive.

    Edit fun fact: in the 1920s there was an Antarctic expedition funded by the British Royal Society. The scientists described necrophilia in emperor penguins (I think), but the Society refused to publish the research to not sully the image of the animals. The paper was finally published some time after 2000.





  • I don’t know where the hostility comes from, but here is a good review article that has a global overview of the impact free-ranging cats have: https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/pan3.10073
    It calls out several studies from the UK that do highlight the impact of cats on the wildlife.
    An additional interesting point is chapter 4.4 “The interest of cat owners”:

    Studies show that many cat owners are opposed to banning the free roaming of domestic cats, although the degree of this opposition varies between countries (Ash & Adams, 2003; Crowley et al., 2019; Lilith et al., 2006; McDonald, Maclean, Evans, & Hodgson, 2015; Thomas et al., 2012). Several UK studies are particularly illustrative. According to Crowley et al. (2019, p. 18), cat owners ‘rarely perceived a strong individual responsibility for preventing or reducing’ predation by their pets. Likewise, McDonald et al. (2015, p. 2751) found that many owners ‘do not accept that cats are harmful’, including owners of highly predatory cats, and moreover found that providing owners with ecological information regarding cats’ wildlife impacts does little or nothing to change their views.