Nipples

Many people , including me, have seen a pet refusing to eat, sometimes to death, because its master was dead or gone. We can interpret this in different ways, and I'm not the kind to "humanize" cat or dogs, but it seems to me these animals also have the ability to depart from their instincts. Lions sometimes kill their own offspring to get the attention of the mother again. Some sort of jealousy, to give some "human" meaning to this behaviour. Some situations can make us ask questions about our instincts, it's true. The last well known and spectacular example that comes to my mind is the asian tsunami that costed so many lives. A large part of the people who were on the beaches fled. Some stayed watching before dying, etc.Humans are simply more intelligent than girafes, birds or cows. They have learned what fire is. That's what allows us to take risks, even if we don't have an estimation of the risks that is precise enough. Maybe some people are unaware of the dangers that can come from the sea. I can recognize a fire, i can put a name on it. A bird can't do that.

Rabbits resorb their fetuses when times are hard. How is that different, except for the technology?

Actually, when I was little our family ran into a situation where we had to give up our family dog. We gave the dog to someone we trusted. A few months later, we got the news that the dog literally starved himself to death.Along the same line, a few months ago my wife and I had to go out of state for a family emergency. We put our 3 dogs in one of those dog care centers (they charged us extra for last minute drop off!). When we came back, we found out from the workers there that one of our dogs refused to eat. We were very glad to have gotten back in time. The incidence reminded me of our family dog years ago.

The only difference (behavior-wise) is the amount of control SOME humans have over there innate, instictive behavior. As shown by other posters, this difference is only in scope and degree of control over these instincts. One residue of primitive instinctive behavior that is still readily apparant in all humans is emotion i.e. anger, fear, happiness, etc.What differs between humans and the rest of the animals is the ability to communicate with greater depth of understanding to others of our same species as a result of increased gray matter and as a result the ability to pass down culture/learned behavior to our offspring which very few animals have the ability to do (and none that can readily increase this knowledge base of learned behavior successfully from generation to generation).

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The instinct to care for offspring is very strong amongst all animals...except for humans who readily will kill their offspring ie abortion. Or they will neglect them and not care for them properly.

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Nonsense. The instinct to care for offspring is completely absent in many animals. A turtle will lay her eggs on the beach, and then set off to sea with no concern for the little ones left to hatch and struggle alone. Seahorse mothers dispatch their eggs, then bugger off and take no more part in parenthood - the father will fertilise the eggs, then once he's released the tiny little fry completely ignores them. I've watched my catfish eat their own eggs after laying - presumably this would be less of a problem in the wild as they wouldn't be in such a confined space. Most animals take no part in their offspring's lives once they've been born (many take no further part following fertilisation) - parental care is the exception, not the norm.Even amongst animals that do care for their young, it's not that rare for them to kill their own babies. Many rodents eat their young in times of stress or overpopulation. Here's an article all about infanticide in brown rats, which discusses mother rates eating their own deformed young, or their entire litters in times of stress or malnutrition. Mother kangaroos have been observed to leave young to die in times of food scarcity, including removing young from their pouch that are not capableof surviving alone. Blue-footed boobies freely allow their stronger chicks to throw the weaker out of the nest, then abandon the losing chick to starve.And in what sense do humans not instinctively protect their young just as much as some of our animal relatives? Most people will fight tooth and nail to protect their children, sometimes at the expense of their own lives. If they sometimes also kill or neglect them, this separates them not at all from the behaviour of other animals.

And this reply brings me back to the topic because it makes me visualize this: a human baby sucking on a nipple, just as cats, dogs, pigs and such a large proportion of the other animals do. Funny thing is that people who believe in an "intelligent design" often say exactly this to support what they assert; since humans are so better at learning and increasing their knowledge, thay must be some superior beings, out of the animal world... well, you know the deal.Edited by olivortex, : No reason given.

Not so much "better" on an individual level but more along the lines of as a species, humans have been able to (at least in the past several thousand years) to increase there collective knowledge base. Wheras accumulated culture and collective knowledge for the rest of the animal species has remained somewhat stagnant.However, from my humanist philosophy, with increased intelligence I believe comes increased responsibility to both our species and the rest of the ecosystem.

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For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
Dr. Carl Sagan

Yes, and it's quite a burden when we realize we do, at best, as much harm to this ecosystem as progress in our quest to understand it.

Of course many ignore that, as a part of the ecosystem, that which we do to cultivate ourselves is cultivating the ecosystem as well.

What is the motivation for an anorexic patient's self inflicted starvation? Typically it is a self image issue. A desire to become more attractive to the opposite sex. Anorexia is indeed a psychological condition that is diagnosed from predictable behavioral patterns, those same patterns that you claim do not exist in Homo Sapiens. What about a mother cat that eats her young at the spotting of the slightest malformation? Or male grizzly bears that will slaughter cubs (even if they are his own) so the female grizzly can go into heat again? You seem to be deriving your view on the animal kingdom from the Disney Channel. How is it non-beneficial? Do you think the succession of those individuals genetic material through their offspring would somehow be beneficial? Your examples are based on a species that relies on the acquisition of data before making the fight flight decision. I guarantee you that once those individuals assessed enough data to determine imminent danger, their Amygdala took over. Sadly, in some cases this is too late.Fight or flight is only one scenario that was provided. How about the others? I will even add pain reflex as an example as well.As a parting note, it should be acknowledged that instincts can be canceled out in a scenario in which a higher priority instinct is being utilized. An example would be a mother getting between a predator and her young, despite the imminent threat of death/injury. These are all adequately explained through psychological research on even a basic level.

That's absurd. Erect nipples serve no sexual function, either in males or females. It is simply a secondary occurrence because during sexual arousal blood fills capillaries more quickly than usual. This also happens with vigorous exercise.The reason men have nipples is because mammals in utero, during the first gestational phase, are all female. Females are XX chromosomes. Part of the X's allele is deleted which crudely looks like the Roman alphabet "Y," giving it now an XY (male).In fact, a penis is nothing more than an enlarged clitoris since as the fetus was developing she started out as a female but later developed as a male.The guy who started the post presents a good question. If the Designer started out with scratch, what purpose does it serve for males to have nipples? Edited by Hyroglyphx, : No reason given.

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"An idealist believes the short run doesn't count. A cynic believes the long run doesn't matter. A realist believes that what is done or left undone in the short run determines the long run." --Sydney J. Harris--

Did you just instance anorexia, child neglect, and trying to get close to active volcanoes as instances of how "humans live by law"? Or did you just covertly shift the goalposts again? Animals sometimes show unwise curiosity --- did you never hear the phrase "curiosity killed the cat"?Neglect of offspring is often seen among animals, as any farmer or zookeeper could tell you.And animals, too, can lose their appetites to the extent of starving to death.Magnificent though these traits may appear to you, they do not set us apart from the animals.---To summarize: humans have survival instincts, and animals are capable of doing things every bit as dumb as human behavior.Perhaps you should try being wrong about something else now?Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

I would believe, as other have pointed out on here, that male nipples are vestigial organs of ontogeny (not to be confused with vestiges of phylogeny)

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The reason men have nipples is because mammals in utero, during the first gestational phase, are all female. Females are XX chromosomes. Part of the X's allele is deleted which crudely looks like the Roman alphabet "Y," giving it now an XY (male).

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Sorry if I'm misunderstanding completely here, but are you saying that your father's Y chromosone produces an X-chromosone which is then turned back into a Y after the first gestational phase?I've been unable to find out if this is true, but I remember reading somewhere that all human embryos begin to develop vans deferens. If it is, then I don't think it makes sense to describe early embryos as females - they're undifferentiated.

Hyroglyphx writes:

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The reason men have nipples is because mammals in utero, during the first gestational phase, are all female.

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Incorrect. During the first 53 days of gestation, all fetuses are hermaphroditic. At that point, XX fetuses will start regressing their male parts while XY fetuses will start regressing their female parts.How do you think hermaphrodites come into being? Parasitic twins?I highly recommend Hormones: Messengers of Life for a more detailed description of how biological sex develops in humans and how it can go awry.

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In fact, a penis is nothing more than an enlarged clitoris since as the fetus was developing she started out as a female but later developed as a male.

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You realize that it's the other way around, yes? A clitoris is an undeveloped penis just as the male mammary system are undeveloped breasts.Again, all humans start as hermaphrodites.

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Rrhain

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Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.