Chiroptera writes:
quote:
On the other hand, many people who own pets can tell you that incest avoidance is not a necessarily strong instinct.
This makes sense from an evolutionary and reproductive point of view: inbreeding may result in a population with lowered adaptability, but that is better than no population at all. The reproductive opportunities of pets are frequently artificially constrained, so it is no surprise that incest would occur in those conditions.
Similarly, the bar to hydridization in avian species (e.g., finch species on the Galapagos Islands) drops considerably lower under the selective pressure of limited food resources (i.e., a bad year via drought, etc.).
The primary mechanism seems to be a lower number of available mates; not surprisingly, creatures will mate with those they can, and if the only available mate is a member of a different, albeit closely related, "species"...well...love will find a way.
The beauty of this is that the hybrids will increase variability, thus filling additional niches (in this example, via beak size/shape, etc.), maximizing the exploitation of limited food resources without any intention or design. Although the Russian proverb claims that "Wolves eat dogs," and, indeed, the reintroducton of wolves into the U.S. Rocky Mountains has curtailed the coyote population, the Eastern coyote has been demonstrated via DNA analysis to be a wolf-coyote hybrid; a good friend in upstate New York adores his bobcat/domestic cat hybrid, Killer (who frightens me, even though he seems to like me alright)...aren't these interesting cases for questions of species?
As an inveterate observer of waterfowl, I can tell you that male mallard ducks are sluts: they will copulate with Canada geese, domestic geese, exotic ducks, ANYTHING. The bumper sticker that says, "If I don't get laid soon, somebody is gonna get hurt!" was made for mallard ducks.
Am I OT yet? Has anyone else read, "If All Men Were Brothers, Would You Let One Marry Your Sister?"