``A female as stupid as a female who gave birth to a lot of children'' is reported


by

Derek Keats

Giving birth to a baby is a very energy-consuming affair for mothers of many animals, including humans. A new paper published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B shows that Southern pied babblers (Turdoides bicolor) , which live in the savannahs of southern Africa, have higher cognitive abilities than females with more offspring. was reported to be low.

General cognitive performance declines with female age and is negatively related to fledging success in a wild bird | Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2022.1748

Female Southern Pied Babblers Seem to Get Stupider as They Have More Babies : ScienceAlert
https://www.sciencealert.com/female-southern-pied-babblers-seem-to-get-stupider-as-they-have-more-babies

Shirokuro Yabuchimedori is a kind of passerine that lives in the savannah of the southern part of the African continent, such as Botswana, Namibia, Minami Africa, and Zimbabwe, and has the habit of cooperating in groups to raise children. A research team led by Camilla Soravia, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Western Australia, conducted a cognitive test on 38 wild black-and-white bumblebees accustomed to humans to investigate variations in cognitive abilities within the group. .

The test consisted of three tasks that gave food as a reward, and each task measured individual items such as learning of relevance, adaptation to experimental changes, and learning of behaviors that should not be done. In general, individuals who performed well in one task performed well in another task, suggesting that their general cognitive performance (GCP) was high.



As a result of the experiment, it was found that there was a difference in the general cognitive ability of both males and females, but overall it tended to be relatively low in older females. Furthermore, when investigating related factors, the research team said that females tended to be more fertile as they got older.

The figure below shows the change in cognitive ability by age and gender of black-and-white Yabuchiba. The vertical axis indicates the height of cognitive ability and the horizontal axis indicates age, with black dots representing females and white dots representing male individuals. Overall, females tend to have lower cognitive abilities as they age.



Below is a diagram showing the relationship between the number of children born in a year and cognitive ability. The vertical axis shows the number of children born and the horizontal axis shows cognitive ability, and it can be seen that individuals with a large number of births have lower cognitive ability.



The scientific media Science Alert argues that black-backed bumblebees use a lot of energy to reproduce, so as females age, they may devote more energy to fertility than cognitive ability. increase.

The research team said, ``As a result of analyzing the breeding data of the white-backed bumblebee over more than 10 years, it was found that individuals with lower general cognitive ability gave birth to more children per year. It suggests a trade-off, and shows that we need to consider not only the benefits, but also the costs, in order to understand how natural selection affects cognitive performance.' said.

in Science,   Creature, Posted by log1h_ik