Posted by Amanda Rosenberger: Check out this recent article from the BBC regarding promiscuous and bisexual behavior of a deep-sea squid, Octopoteuthis deletron. Apparently males will exchange their ‘sperm packets’ with any other squid individual they come across, regardless of sex. Researchers suggest that this is a strategy for males to make sure that they never miss a mating opportunity in a system where meeting a conspecific is a rare occurrence. I wonder if that conclusion is simply based on the assumptions we talked about yesterday – that all species should have an ecology that maximizes fitness. I wonder if it simply not a costly enough behavior in terms of fitness to be selected against; therefore, it continues. An assumption that everything a creature does is somehow adaptive is actually a bit counter-intuitive to me. What do you think?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14986769
Interesting… what some things will do to reproduce… 🙂