Larry J. Young/Yerkes National Primate Research Center
Prairie voles on gels of their DNA, a possible clue to their home life.
Posted on 06/10/2005 4:18:16 PM PDT by neverdem
Some male prairie voles are devoted fathers and faithful partners, while others are less satisfactory on both counts. The spectrum of behavior is shaped by a genetic mechanism that allows for quick evolutionary changes, two researchers from Emory University report in today's issue of Science.
The mechanism depends on a highly variable section of DNA involved in controlling a gene. The Emory researchers who found it, Elizabeth A. D. Hammock and Larry J. Young, say they have detected the same mechanism embedded in the sequence of human DNA but do not yet know how it may influence people's behavior.
Voles, not to be confused with the burrowing, hill-making mole, are mouselike rodents with darker coats and fatter tails. The control section of their DNA expands and contracts in the course of evolution so that members of a wild population of voles, the Emory researchers have found, will carry sections of many different lengths. Male voles with a long version of the control section are monogamous and devoted to their pups, whereas those with shorter versions are less so.
People have the same variability in their DNA, with a control section that comes in at least 17 lengths detected so far, Dr. Young said.
So should women seek men with the longest possible DNA control region in the hope that, like the researchers' voles, they will display "increased probability of preferences for a familiar-partner female over a novel-stranger female"?
Dr. Young said he expected that any such genetic effect in men would be influenced by culture, and thus hard to predict on an individual basis.
The control mechanism is also present in humans' two closest cousins, the chimpanzee and the bonobo, and bears on a controversy as to which of the two species humans more closely resemble.
Chimpanzees operate territorially based...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Larry J. Young/Yerkes National Primate Research Center
Prairie voles on gels of their DNA, a possible clue to their home life.
...another animal-based proposal for eugenics from feminazis and the NY Times.
"Voles, not to be confused with the burrowing, hill-making mole..."
I'm guessing that only a NYT reader would make that mistake.
More junk science from the Slimes.
FReepmail me if you want on or off my health and science ping list.
Should I say it?
This article says a whole lot of nothing.
Choices are not genetic. Yet another attempt to explain away bad behavior because of genetics.
Vale of the Vole?
LOL
Let's see if our "genes" are compatible.
Oh sorry, can't date you, I'm a level 18, and you're a level.. 11. Bye!
"Although our genetic composites make out well in re compatibility -- Venus conjunct Jupiter. I mean. Gene 3 conjunct your Gene 13 means our child will never be socially adept; no children for us. Let's take a pledge of compatibility!
Scientology dating sounds so boring to me.
Ja Vole...(excuse my German)
20th Century Vole Pictures
presents
A Man with 2 Buttocks
b.s.
seems like a publish or perish BS article. Produce a PC hypothesis and then pray for the power of PC to yield funding when in competition with feminist (garbage) studies departments.
Kill anything that is related to a mole, sounds like mole or looks like mole. The little bastards are a menace.
I can just imagine the uproar if someone wrote an article posing the comparison of women and some bird that is constantly squawking.
Evolutionary Psychology junkscience alert.
I disagree. This could prove to be quite vole-atile. The literature will be vole-uminous, and will impact our theories of human vole-ition.
Is there an e-vole-ution ping list?
Thanks for the ping.
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