http://neuroanthropology.net/2010/01/21/wednesday-round-up-99/ For a greater understanding of the encultured brain and body... Mon, 06 Feb 2012 11:12:25 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ http://neuroanthropology.net/2010/01/21/wednesday-round-up-99/#comment-10610 Wed, 27 Jan 2010 09:53:53 +0000 http://neuroanthropology.net/?p=4751#comment-10610 Well said, Carl. I particularly like your last line, “I don’t find intelligent design any more convincing when evolution does it than when God does it.” The evolutionary biologist might respond that the theory is a way of generating hypotheses, in this case noisy and counter-intuitive ones that also draw on comparative primatological research. But that’s not how the story gets presented originally. Still, a story on female copulatory vocalization – as you say, one to enjoy.

]]> http://neuroanthropology.net/2010/01/21/wednesday-round-up-99/#comment-10608 Wed, 27 Jan 2010 04:27:30 +0000 http://neuroanthropology.net/?p=4751#comment-10608 My wife and I really enjoyed Ryan’s piece on female copulatory vocalization, but with three qualifications. 1) The sample for humans (n=3) may not quite achieve representation. 2) The research setting in which the (socialized) human sample really cuts loose while under close observation is not easy to envision. 3) To say that loud copulatory vocalization must be adaptive because it persists despite creating predator risk is barely better than a just-so story. Persistent mutations don’t need to be adaptive, they only need to not be fatal (the survival principle is not ‘fittest’ but ‘fit enough’). So all that hypothesizing about what all the noise must be ‘for’ may be beside the point. I don’t find intelligent design any more convincing when evolution does it than when God does it.

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