
Diego, A Centenarian Giant Tortoise Whose Sex Drive Saved His Species - Thevet
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/11/world/americas/galapagos-islands-tortoises.html
======
deadghost
Any chance his sex drive is genetic? We might end up with islands filled with
horny tortoises.

~~~
mixedCase
If that were to become a problem, we only need to get Charles Darwin's
cookbook.

------
sillysaurus3
I heard that the total population of humans was once reduced to a few hundred.
Was that just a myth, or was there a time that humans were in danger of
extinction?

~~~
meric
[http://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2012/10/22/163397584/ho...](http://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2012/10/22/163397584/how-
human-beings-almost-vanished-from-earth-in-70-000-b-c)

It says the lowest estimate was 40.

~~~
eru
I wonder how they came up with that number. If it's via genetic testing on
current humans, they wouldn't be able to tell whether it was actually just 40,
or whether there might have been some other human populations at the time,
that just didn't happen to leave any descendants. (But only died out much
later.)

~~~
dogma1138
That's pretty much the same thing because it means that that population was
cut off our current gene pool so they have no effect on our survival or
possible extinction.

~~~
eru
Not necessarily.

Compare the following situations:

\- Only one group of 40 breeding pairs left. Very risky.

\- A bunch of pools of left, one of them consisting of 40 breeding pairs only.
Over time the small pool recovers to a few thousand people, and at that time
the other pools have some accidents and die out.

The second situation was never as risky as the first. But we wouldn't be able
to tell them apart from current genetics.

~~~
edmccard
>The second situation was never as risky as the first.

But if both situations have the same outcome -- everyone not descended from
the 40-pair group is dead -- does it make sense after the fact to distinguish
them by "riskiness"? It seems to be a distinction without a difference, as the
saying goes.

~~~
tedunangst
What if the surviving pool killed the other pools? In the absence of that one
surviving pool, there would have been another. Or maybe even more?

~~~
edmccard
>What if the surviving pool killed the other pools?

Well, what if they did?

I think that I have been incorrectly assuming that this subthread was about
whether, in 2017, we could tell which of two things had happened -- either
"there was a time when there were only 40 pairs of humans on all the earth",
or "everyone today is descended from a 40-pair group that may have coexisted
with others but for some reason those others died out."

If in fact we're instead talking about whether we can make any distinctions
whatever between the two situations, even though we know now that whichever
actually occurred, humanity didn't go extinct, then I retract my objections.

~~~
eru
Oh, I was musing whether we can tell today---both in practice or in theory.

------
hannofcart
The article's headline is what every man dreams his epitaph would read.

~~~
notreal55
Not really. I like sex, but I really do not care about reproducing, that much.
And sex is really not that important to me. My dream is to create something
awesome that I can show off to the whole world. I have a feeling that most
males are like me, they simply settle for something easier like sex.

~~~
julius_set
Sex drive and libido is a function of hormones in your body, and nitrogen
retention. My guess is that your Estradiol is fairly high and your
testosterone levels are below average resulting in a diminished sex drive.

There is nothing wrong with having lots of sex and liking sex, it's a natural
state our body desires and you can still get the work you want accomplished
and have lots of sex.

