ANT211H5 Chapter Notes - Chapter 3: Male Lactation, Gonad, Chromosome
Document Summary
The important question here is: why mammals evolved genes specifying that only females would grow to be pregnant and have the hormones to feed their offspring. However, there are some exceptions: pigeons (both male and female lactate), seahorses (males get pregnant not females) Some males experience lactation and breast development at some point in their lives (either do to taking specific hormones or just under weird circumstances). Animals in contrast, are not designed to provide an optimal solution for a designed lifestyle. Both the mother and the father are equally responsible because there is no bigger investment in the mother than there is in the father. All the mother has to do is lay the eggs at a very early stage in the pregnancy, thus she does not commit physical and mental time towards the offspring before it is born. We get 23 chromosomes from each parent, each pair identical to one another except the sex defining ones.
