MAHDOOD on Nostr: My mind is blown. How different are we actually from other animals? "I again ...
My mind is blown. How different are we actually from other animals?
"I again emphasize the deep biological roots of emotional regression, by presenting a brief description of an emotional regression in the ground finches of the Galapagos Islands in 1982–1983 and its eerie similarity to the financial crisis of 2007–2008 in our own species. Peter Grant and Rosemary Grant (1985), evolutionary biologists at Princeton University, began studying the ground finches that lived on one of the Galápagos Islands in 1973. They returned year after year and accomplished some very important research that has enhanced understanding of Darwin’s theory of evolution by the mechanism of natural selection. The small part of their work that I describe here began when an especially powerful El Niño occurred during 1983. The impact on the islands was an extraordinary amount of rainfall. This resulted in incredibly abundant food resources for the finches. The staples of their diet, seeds and caterpillars, increased exponentially. The abundance had a very interesting impact on the birds. Earlier research had investigated the normal social structure of the ground finches. The males joust for territory, and then, once the male that will control that territory is sorted out, male-female courtships begin. Once a relationship is formed, the pair cooperates extensively in the process of raising the young. The female offspring that are born do not normally breed until their second year of life. In years in which El Niño does not occur, the conditions can become quite dry, resulting in fewer food resources and consequent lack of breeding for most of the birds—the birds concentrate on survival rather than reproduction. In wet periods, the breeding process resumes in the orderly manner described above. However, in the extraordinarily wet year of 1983, something unusual happened. In the midst of the superabundant resources, the birds began a copulating frenzy. Some birds produced up to twenty-nine eggs in seven clutches and fledged twenty young! This level of reproduction had not occurred in the first ten years of research observation. The mothers, normally monogamous, became bigamous, even polygamous. Females commonly abandoned their begging young offspring. Furthermore, the young females in their first year of life were copulating with males. As for the males, they staked out poor territories but still managed to mate. Not surprisingly, with all this frenzied breeding going on, the population exploded. Everyone had enough to eat. However, eventually the rain stopped, and resources dropped precipitously. Huge numbers of the expanded population died."
— Dr. Michael Kerr from Bowen Theory's Secrets: Revealing the Hidden Life of Families
"I again emphasize the deep biological roots of emotional regression, by presenting a brief description of an emotional regression in the ground finches of the Galapagos Islands in 1982–1983 and its eerie similarity to the financial crisis of 2007–2008 in our own species. Peter Grant and Rosemary Grant (1985), evolutionary biologists at Princeton University, began studying the ground finches that lived on one of the Galápagos Islands in 1973. They returned year after year and accomplished some very important research that has enhanced understanding of Darwin’s theory of evolution by the mechanism of natural selection. The small part of their work that I describe here began when an especially powerful El Niño occurred during 1983. The impact on the islands was an extraordinary amount of rainfall. This resulted in incredibly abundant food resources for the finches. The staples of their diet, seeds and caterpillars, increased exponentially. The abundance had a very interesting impact on the birds. Earlier research had investigated the normal social structure of the ground finches. The males joust for territory, and then, once the male that will control that territory is sorted out, male-female courtships begin. Once a relationship is formed, the pair cooperates extensively in the process of raising the young. The female offspring that are born do not normally breed until their second year of life. In years in which El Niño does not occur, the conditions can become quite dry, resulting in fewer food resources and consequent lack of breeding for most of the birds—the birds concentrate on survival rather than reproduction. In wet periods, the breeding process resumes in the orderly manner described above. However, in the extraordinarily wet year of 1983, something unusual happened. In the midst of the superabundant resources, the birds began a copulating frenzy. Some birds produced up to twenty-nine eggs in seven clutches and fledged twenty young! This level of reproduction had not occurred in the first ten years of research observation. The mothers, normally monogamous, became bigamous, even polygamous. Females commonly abandoned their begging young offspring. Furthermore, the young females in their first year of life were copulating with males. As for the males, they staked out poor territories but still managed to mate. Not surprisingly, with all this frenzied breeding going on, the population exploded. Everyone had enough to eat. However, eventually the rain stopped, and resources dropped precipitously. Huge numbers of the expanded population died."
— Dr. Michael Kerr from Bowen Theory's Secrets: Revealing the Hidden Life of Families