Friday, March 10, 2006
speaking of barbaric yawps (TM Walt Whitman via Senorbeavis)
Bit o' science:
many mammals engage in post-copulatory vocalizations. After male ground squirrels finish getting busy with female ground squirrels down under in the burrow, they will immediately climb to the surface and give a unique call. Fallow deer do the same thing (except for the underground part). There is a body of literature dedicated to discovering whether these vocalizations have an intersexual benefit (hey ladies, I am such a stud. You want my genes in your next generation) or intrasexual (Dudes, I'm a stud defer to me on future conflicts over mates and food because I am the muthafuckin' fittest). The latter seems roundly untrue. and all animal communication is tempered by the fact that it is waste of energy and can attract predators. It seems most likely that these animals are calling to other females or indicating thier continued fecundity to them. so next time some dumb-ass at the water cooler is talking about the pipe he laid last night, you can know that he is channelling his inner ground squirrel (or maybe that is just if he is telling his date about the pipe he laid the other night with someone else).
many mammals engage in post-copulatory vocalizations. After male ground squirrels finish getting busy with female ground squirrels down under in the burrow, they will immediately climb to the surface and give a unique call. Fallow deer do the same thing (except for the underground part). There is a body of literature dedicated to discovering whether these vocalizations have an intersexual benefit (hey ladies, I am such a stud. You want my genes in your next generation) or intrasexual (Dudes, I'm a stud defer to me on future conflicts over mates and food because I am the muthafuckin' fittest). The latter seems roundly untrue. and all animal communication is tempered by the fact that it is waste of energy and can attract predators. It seems most likely that these animals are calling to other females or indicating thier continued fecundity to them. so next time some dumb-ass at the water cooler is talking about the pipe he laid last night, you can know that he is channelling his inner ground squirrel (or maybe that is just if he is telling his date about the pipe he laid the other night with someone else).
# posted by 8yearoldsdude @ 10:24 AM 
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How about the unique sound being a form of verbal marking ... Such as I came, I conquered, and that bitch is now mine. I am not sure what this means about water-cooler talk and the inner ground squirrel -- which is an expression I really like, by the way -- but I think it is more like, "the pipe I laid went right to heaven, so don't even think about dating her, 'cause that bitch will never be satisfied by anyone like that again."
I'm with Sleepless. Couldn't it be a post-coital territory call? Ground squirrel version would be: "I put in the effort to get this lovely female to mate with me, don't you come taking advantage of her momentary acquiescence to mix up your lazy-ass sperm with my hard-working genes." Because humans are better at manipulating the future than ground squirrels, perhaps theirs is a pre-coital territory call, protecting their right to the pleasure of conquest rather than the assurance of paternity. Water cooler version would be: "This lovely female is taken. I've sunk a dozen roses and ten minutes of phone time into this lovely female, so don't you come substituting yourself for me or messing up my hard work by making me compete with you for the contemplated future laying of this pipe, which I, with the strategizing ability of a homo sapiens, have rendered a sure thing."
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