From: Joe E. Dees (jdees0@students.uwf.edu)
Date: Sun Jul 12 1998 - 13:38:28 MDT
Date sent: Sun, 12 Jul 1998 11:57:32 -0500
To: extropians@extropy.com
From: Bradley Felton <zim@pobox.com>
Subject: Re: Disorders
Send reply to: extropians@extropy.com
> At 10:25 PM 7/11/98 -0400, Harvey Newstrom wrote:
> >Maybe not. It is well documented that rats in an overcrowded cage start
> >producing more homosexual rats. This seems to be a normal (genetic?)
> >reaction to over-population. In the modern, over-populated world, it
> >would make sense that the same factors could kick in to slowdown human
> >over-population. If this is the case, it may be the breeding population
> >that keeps increasing the population beyond sustainable levels who are
> >overriding the natural programming with memetic ideals.
>
> I think there are a couple of errors here:
>
> 1. An increase in gay rats does not slow down the population bloom, as
> non-gay rats are always happy to take up the slack.
>
> 2. If these gay rats are not contributing to the gene pool, their trait
> can not be said to have evolved for this purpose (it may be a "glitch",
> which evolved for some other purpose but turns fatal in an over-populated
> environment).
>
> In humans, the "gay gene" exists in an equilibrium with those of other
> sexual stratedgies, increasing its share in small societies where the
> increased disease risk that this strategy brings is not a large factor,
> decreasing when the opposite is true. Presumedly something similar is
> going on with the rats....
>
> -Bradley Felton zim@pobox.com
>From what I understand, prenatal stress during certain fetal critical
periods can cause the mother's hormonal levels and ratios to
fluctuate, resulting in an increased likelihood of homosexual
orientation in the child. This makes evolutionary sense; if the
environment is hostile enough to cause hardship-induced stress to
the mother, it is likely (the rule - though periodically broken - being
environmental inertia) to be rough on succeeding generations.
Individuals who would not have children of their own and could
therefore devote resources to the well-being of their siblings'
children would help sustain a genetic line through these times; when
the environment improved and stress dscreased, so would the
homosexual percentage of the population. I believe a study was
done in Germany with children born in and immediately after the W
W II period.
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