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Robert Woolley's avatar

How could they possibly have known which animals were male and which were female if they couldn't ask them?

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Jeff S.'s avatar

I guess I'll have to dig out the Biorxv version and take a look, but besides taking a look at their data, I'm most interested in what their rationale was for conducting this study and their conclusions. And take a look at their web page to see their department, research interests,publication record. From snippets in this article giving examples of the language used, smells like an agenda.

Been 40 years since college Zoology classes, but my recollection is that what we were taught was that in mammals males tended be larger , but that depended on how a particular species had evolved to fill a niche, including their physical characteristics and behaviors related to reproducing effectively to insure maintaining a fit species. My recollection was these precepts were based on years of observations that were devoted to oriented toward understanding natural processes, and were not being driven by any agenda other than seeking truth.

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