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Originally Posted by OngBonga
estrous, whatever that is, presumably the dolphin term for "in season".
Sort of, yes. But it's not what dolphins call it, it's what biologists call it.
Originally Posted by OngBonga
this happens when populations become too small,
If you add this caveat, then sure I agree. But before you said (with no evidence) that dolphins would mate with anything, which presumably includes their close relatives.
Originally Posted by OngBonga
this assumes that incestual beings are exclusively incestual, that is they aren't having non-incestual relations. But that isn't the case. In most cases in the animal kingdom, incest is also rape. It's sexually aggressive males doing what they want to do, and submissive females accepting it, or weaker males hating it.
It's the fitness of the offspring that matters in all this. Given a choice between mating incestuously and mating non-incestuously (that's the crucial point here, there being a choice), your genes have a better chance of survival if you mate non-incestuously.
Originally Posted by OngBonga
Again, implying it's exclusive, that it's a "preference" in an individual caused by a gene, rather than a simple behavioural response to hormones, coupled with a lack of morals and empathy.
You're putting the cart before the horse here. Evolution doesn't care about morals and empathy, it cares about behaviour. That's one of the things that makes altruism so mysterious. Sure, if you jump on a grenade to save your buddies you're a great guy, but you're also taking yourself out of the gene pool.
Even if screwing your sister made you a hero in the eyes of your tribe, it'd still be bad evolutionarily. The universal moral construct of a social taboo around incest emerges from the fact it's a bad idea evolutionarily.
Originally Posted by OngBonga
We're probably the only animal on the planet that has figured out it's bad. If dolphins give no fucks (and yes I appreciate I haven't shown it to be definite), then I'd be surprised if any other wild animal has the intelligence. Maybe some primates have figured it out.
Animals probably haven't read Darwin, even the smart ones. But you don't need a conscious awareness of evolution in order to behave in ways that promote your genes. You can be human and not even believe in evolution. You're still going to be trying to survive and pass on your genes.
Originally Posted by OngBonga
Evolution is a product of chance.
Wut?
Originally Posted by OngBonga
Incest isn't a product of a genetic mutation that will ultimately get weeded out of the gene pool. If it was, it would only happen very rarely.
It does happen only very rarely. Prove otherwise. Using science, not some random thing you read on R/dolphinsaredicks or wherever you're getting your information from.
Originally Posted by OngBonga
Normal sexual behaviour is more likely to result in reproductive success than incestual, so an incest gene would get weeded out of the gene pool. Clearly that hasn't happened.
It has happened. Incest between close relatives is extremely rare, about as rare as hemophilia. In animals, it only happens when there's no other mates available.
The idea that bad genes must immediately disappear from the gene pool is oversimplistic. There's plenty of nasty diseases and conditions caused by recessive genes that only express themselves when those recessive genes get matched with a partner's recessive genes in their offspring. That's the main reason incest is a bad idea in the first place - you're more likely to pass on some shitty genetic condition to your kids, even if you don't have the condition yourself because you only have one of the recessive genes in the pair.
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