
No, Animals Do Not Have Genders - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/blog/no-animals-do-not-have-genders
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jjk166
I find the author's dismissal of animal culture as absurd. Learned behavior is
incredibly common throughout the animal kingdom with many species having
complicated social structures. The author contrasts these with human culture
by saying that human culture varies between populations and changes over time,
but this ignores the immense anthropocentric bias. Humans are extremely
numerous and widespread compared to most large vertebrates - there are 7
million humans for every gorilla in the wild, as an example - and spread out
around the world. Certainly if there were only 1000 humans on earth all
located in a small area, there would be significantly fewer distinct cultures.
It is undeniable that human cultural norms shift over the years because
millions of accounts of how culture used to be survive to be compared to; when
the study of animal cognition is only a few decades old how can we possibly
claim with confidence that macaques behaved the same centuries or millenia
ago, especially given that we have documented how their societies are changing
in response to human activity in modern times. The author claims that human
gender roles are different because we have cultural norms and animals don't -
despite plenty of observations of animal groups punishing members who do not
behave according to the typical pattern. The difficulty in determining which
human behaviors are biological and which are cultural is noted to be difficult
if not impossible because of the lack of a control group unaffected by any
culture; but where are the control groups for every other species which allows
us to make such observations? The author states that we can safely infer that
all sex-specific animal behaviors are due to innate biological differences; I
would think a professor would have the self-awareness to recognize that is
exactly the same assumption they are writing this article to specifically
complain about.

This is a philosophy professor who teaches political science, not a biologist.
Her only cited references relating to animal behavior in the article are those
showing complex behaviors being passed down between generations and animals
adopting and sharing new learned behaviors. I very much hope that the author's
statement on the universal acceptance of the idea that animals do not have
culture among gender theorists is similarly incorrect.

