I'm thinking it's the

Be sure to eat any children the females may have bore him.

part.

Ahhh, I'm crying laughing. I think I'm gonna puke.

The eating part is an exaggeration, but in many species males kill offspring not their own, in order to give their own offspring less competition, or to breed at all. In lions, killing nursing cubs puts the female back in estrus. Chimps also practice this as well, and human children are about seven times more likely to die at the hands of a stepparent than a natural parent.

Whoa. ortho, that would make a great FPP.

Huh. I thought it was pretty general knowledge, it didn't occur to me to fpp it.

I was think of fpp'ing gene conflicts and drive, but couldn't find good introductory-level web pages.

This is my rofl today from AskMe.

Yeah, that one got me too.

What you eat beforehand plays an important role as well, since you need to quickly urinate upon the surrounding area to mark your territory. If the others don't apporve of the scent, you're even more screwed than you were to begin with.

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I thought it was pretty general knowledge

But you've been listening to an animal behavior course lately, right? So your idea of what's "general knowledge" may be a little off right now.

I thought it was pretty common knowledge too, but books about evolutionary biology and psychology are kind of like candy for me - I read lots of that stuff.

Hm, I thought the originally referenced comment was from our Eamon, but it turns out on looking at the profile that it's a different Eamon. Go figure. The midwest is full of witty Meta-Eamons.

But you've been listening to an animal behavior course lately, right?

But I knew it before I listened to the course -- part of the fun of that course is that I've ben able to "answer" many of the prof's questions before or more thoroughly than his (admittedly freshman or sophomore) students.

I thought it was pretty common knowledge too, but books about evolutionary biology and psychology are kind of like candy for me - I read lots of that stuff.

Yes, me too matildaben. In fact, for a couple of years I stopped reading anything else -- including fiction, and just read evo bio and evo pysch books. I tend to throw myself into subjects almost to the exclusion of any other subject. (That's' part of why the Bush regime so upsets me -- it's captured my attention.)

I became a bit tedious I'm afraid, as any conversation would provoke me into long-winded evo pysch and evo bio nuero pysch explanations.

(Of course, that was probably preferable to those phases when I talked like a post to comp.land.c++.moderated.)

An interesting thing about field mice (who are big on infanticide) is that males go through a period of reduced infanticide approximately 3 weeks (gestation time for mice) after they mate. This is with any pups that they are exposed to. Presumably this reduces the likelihood that they are killing their own pups.