Via Gina Fiedel (her photo/meme, too).
Why am I not surprised by this entirely plausible solution?
Originally shared by Gina Fiedel
I’ll Leave The Commentary To You: My Smiling Lips Are Sealed
Train Your Brain & Don’t End Up Dead
A little humor never hurt anybody. Especially on Hump Day. 😉
“Male Mammoths Died in ‘Silly Ways’ More Often Than Females”
“In many species, males tend to do somewhat stupid things that end up getting them killed in silly ways, and it appears that may have been true for mammoths also,” said Love Dalén, an evolutionary biologist from the Swedish Museum of Natural History.
In a study published Thursday in the journal Current Biology, he and his colleagues analyzed DNA from nearly 100 mammoth bones, teeth and tusks, and found that about two-thirds came from males. They speculate the reason for the skewed sex-ratio may have to do with the risky behavior that young males take after leaving the protection of their mothers to live on their own.
“Old females are very knowledgeable, they know best,” he said.
The thought is that mammoths, like today’s elephants, lived in matriarchal societies where adult females protected the young. But around the ages of 14 or 15 when puberty set in, males left their herd and either became loners or joined bachelor groups, which were often led by inexperienced males. That was when they were more likely to do something risky, and find themselves stuck in frozen muck.
NY Times: https://goo.gl/KTtUP4 (Photo: me)
#TheSniperMind
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