why animals reproduce? Like the more healthy offspring is raised doesn’t mean more competition for food and survival?
In: Biology
All life basically has one “rule” that has driven it from the very beginning, replicate. (Why is a whole other question)
With that as a basis, we can work out why they reproduce. So let’s invent two animals:
Animal A doesn’t reproduce, and it’s functionally immortal, it will live forever.
Animal B is not immortal, but can reproduce.
Over time, the population of animal B will increase exponentially, while the population of animal A will slowly decrease as they die to random chance accidents, or due to predation from species B as it grows and requires more sustenance.
Over time, animal A will die out, whereas animal B will thrive. Of course, plenty of animal B will die of starvation once they overstretch their resources, but overall the species will have been more successful than species A. Nature can be cruel, it cares very little for individual animal B’s, but rather the species as a whole. A species can have 95% of its newborn members die, but so long as more survive than die, it’s a successful species.
And that’s all survival of the fittest is really. What species can continue its line, and what species die out and dissapear. Immortality seems to lose out to reproduction, especially when reproduction allows for random mutations that could well make an even better version of Animal B, where animal A would never evolve further, as it makes no new generations.
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