Population self-regulation
I really like it when things seem to converge. For example, in
December, 3 things converged together around light sensitivity: 1)
We watched a rather silly sci-fi movie where people's pineal gland
grew and poked out of their heads like a little tentacle, 2) we had
a long discussion over Christmas about my S.O.'s and her sisters'
inability to sleep if there's the slightest bit of light in the
room, and 3) I learned that some animals have a well developed
"third eye" that is related to their pineal gland. It's like the
gods were telling me to learn a little more about melatonin and the
pineal gland! As usual, I only did about 1/3 of my homework.
Anyway, it's happened again. Three tidbits my mind has assembled
into a pattern. (Make no mistake, convergence like this is a
figment of your imagination. It is NOT your God talking to
you.)
Anyway, so I'm reading this "Evolution without Selection" book by
Lima-de-Faria (LdF) and finally arrive at the following
paragraphs:
Population control in mammals by chemical
interaction
Several species of mammals regulate the size of their population.
The fluctuations in number of progeny are controlled by means of
chemical communication between the different individuals of the
community.
The rabbit shows autocontrol of its fecundity. If the community is
small the females produce as many as 30 animals per year, but if
the population is large this number diminishes appreciably. The
same behaviour pattern is displayed by the squirrel Sciurus
carolinensis, the black rat Rattus rattus and the
mouse Mus musculus (Reichholf 1984).
This autocontrol of the population occurs by the transmission of
chemical information. Male rats are able to distinguish between the
pheromones originating from the urine of females which are in
oestrus or in dioestrus. In the mouse a pheromone is produced by
the males which is received by the olfactory organs of the females.
This influences the production of the pituitary gonadotropin in the
females and results in a shortening of the oestrus cycle and leads
to a synchronization of the oestrus and copulation periods (Carr
and Caul 1962). The boar accumulates in its saliva the hormone
androsterone. A chemical precursor is carried by the blood stream
into the submaxillary gland where it is transformed into
androsterone. The courtship and copulation are directed by the male
saliva which is injected into the mouth of the female. If the
female is in oestrus she becomes receptive and copulation takes
place.
OK. So far so good. A bunch of biological gobbledy-gook that, if
you think too much about it, starts to sound kinda gross. But
combine that with my belief that
99.99% of the earth's problems are
caused by over-population by humans, I hear a tiny resonant
humm. I wonder how/if humans control their own population?
One conjecture might be
war. LdF talks about war
just a few paragraphs later, but with no explicit connection with
autoregulation of the human population. He points out that war is a
relatively modern invention (8,000 years relative to the
million-year existence of our genus), roughly corresponding to the
move to agrarian society.
The relation between the over-population of the earth and
permanently squatting on a plot of land seems pretty clear to me.
It's OK to permanently squat on a plot of land when there's plenty
of land and very few humans. But as the population grows, it
becomes easier to remove the squatter than to find an empty plot of
land. Hence,
WAR. ... Oh, and hence banks and
foreclosure, too.
So, the first element in this convergence was running across the
population autoregulation text in LdF's book. The second element
was my commitment to the Global Population Speakout, which was
scheduled for this month, February. (BTW, I've only done a little
speaking out on twitter and 1 mailing list so far. So, this web log
entry is my actual speak out attempt.)
The third is the following article:
Cost
of raising child breaks �200,000.
It suddenly hit me that money, the universal unit of measure for
the transmission of goods, might well be our (human) population
autocontrol pheromone! Granted, it's not a chemical. But, as
biologists seem to think, a chemical is just a mediator for
information and control. And money is the mediator, at least for
western society, for information and control. (Yes, yes, I know
that most people tend to think things like language, books, the
internet, etc. are the media for information. But a few good long
conversations with some CFOs and, perhaps, the few classical
liberals left in the world, will convince you that it's money that
makes the decisions in this world, not thought or votes.)
Perhaps money has become our pheromone for population
autoregulation?