2. Behavioral Evolution

I just started Robert Sapolsky lectures series on Youtube on Human behavior biology, and on the second lecture, link to this video, he is explaining how evolutionary biology can be used to predict lots of animal behaviors just through the differences on the skull size of adult males and females. He considers two groups of primates, one in which the skull of the adult male is quite bigger than the female and the other where they are about the same size. He then asks the student: "which group would display higher male aggression?" I am lost at this point. How can the size difference alone be used to answer that question? The students answer the question: "the first group (in which the males are bigger…

> Looking at the long history of evolution, I'd say no. This entire lecture series on Human Behavioral Biology is worth watching from the beginning, but I've linked to a moment where Sapolsky describes tit-for-tat strategies arising in animals. First example: Vampire Bats. []: link to this video

There is a great lecture from Robert Sapolsky/Stanford 2010 about behavioral evolution / prisoner's dilemma / tit for tat strategy: link to this video

Besides the gut flora being capable of some neurological effects it has demonstrated to be psychoactive. Professor Robert Sapolsky1 has an amazing course on Behavorial Evolution. The toxoplasmic gondii comes from the rat -> cat -> gut -> brain, it is profound that side effects in the brain are chemically constructed from the stomach. Considering that most animals do not even have a brain,but usually have a stomach, it is evident that the gut is underestimated in the evolutionary tree. 1 link to this video

I think the tournament vs. pair-bonding spectrum 1 might be very insightful with regards to this debate. The observation is basically that animals have different manifestations of sexual dimorphism and that there are very clear behavioral patterns that correlate with them. In some species, e.g. gorillas, males are big and muscular and you reliably get a lot of aggression and males that care little about their offspring. In tournament species also only few alpha males have reproductive success. On the other hand, in other species, e.g. bonobos, there is very little sexual dimorphism, little aggression, females select partners that display parenting behavior and most males reproduce. It turn…