Do Humans behave to maximise R essays

Do Humans behave to maximise R essays The first part of this title that we need to address is what is reproductive success? I feel that it can either be the amount of offspring that your genes are passed onto, or ensuring that the offspring you do have enjoy a good upbringing with plenty of resources. This is seen in many species where optimal clutch size is a major factor. However if it is difficult to say whether humans behave in this manner due to such events as the demographic transition which I will talk about later. Humans seem to behave very differently to other species within the animal kingdom. The basis of clutch size for most species is the amount of resources available. For example during a baron patch where food may be scarce some species will have a smaller clutch size to ensure survival of some of their offspring, this is also true the other way round. However humans are not going with his trend at the moment. I f we look at modern day Britain resources are more plentiful than ever before, however the birth rate is also the lowest it has been at just 1.8 children per couple. That particular statistic is amazing as it means many couples are passing on fewer genes than they own. What I mean by this is that a child possesses half of each of his parents genes, so a minimum of two children are needed to ensure that you are genetically replaced. If we look at this and put it to my first answer to my question what is reproductive success? Then the answer to the title would have to be no. As modern day humans are not passing on a sufficient amount of genes to replace themselves in the gene pool. The hypothesis that explains this explains that perhaps humans would prefer to ensure their children achieve in this would by giving a smaller amount of children more attention, and therefore more resources. This would allow the children to have a potentially more successful life which would mean there being more chance of your genes staying in ...