why animals reproduce? Like the more healthy offspring is raised doesn’t mean more competition for food and survival?
In: Biology
The point to reproduce is to pass on your genes. There a two basic strategies for this. Produce a few offspring at a time and spend a lot of time and energy raising them to reproductive age. Or put very little energy into raising them and produce a lot. First way, you don’t have many offspring but you give them a better chance of surviving and passing on their (and also your) genes. Second strategy you increase the odds of your genes continuing through sheer number of offspring. As far as competition, I think it would be similar to altruism. They’ve found that altruism in nature is found more among related individuals. The more closely related, the higher the incidence of altruism because you share genes, so helping a relative helps pass on some of your genes indirectly. So, yes, more offspring means more competition, but more likely your genes will continue getting passed on.
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