5 ms·

Isn't this one of the reasons kissing evolved; To develop resistance to each others' microbiome, and not allergies?

shermantanktop 3y ago
That wasn’t in my copy of Rudyard Kipling’s “Just So Stories.” A little more seriously, that sounds like a behavior that would be beneficial for many creatures, and yet only a few do anything like that. If it were effective, it’d be common.
- selfsimilar 3y ago
  Dogs eat other dogs' excrement in part to keep a healthy and diverse gut culture. I prefer kissing.
  - thaumasiotes 3y ago
    I have not heard that this is known to be a reason dogs do that - it's more common for them to eat their own feces, which can't have any gut-culture benefit - but it does work in humans, where it's called a "fecal transplant".
  - 6510 3y ago
    How can you prefer one thing over the other if you haven't tried both? It's so funny how we are set up to think we are in control but overriding the default here would take some serious effort. Who is in charge really? The gut microbes order specific kinds of food then we obey? Trying to refuse to eat or change the order is pretty hard.
- pushedx 3y ago
  Dogs sniffing butts?
  - shermantanktop 3y ago
    Maybe? It’d have be pretty intense to transfer microbiome diversity.
- JoshTko 3y ago
  Don't nearly all mammal parents extensively lick their offspring's faces?
- LargoLasskhyfv 3y ago
  But they lick each other.
yieldcrv 3y ago
applying intention to evolution is a bad habit there are only accidents or happenstance that might turn out to be sex linked traits and not end life before a viable offspring is created if it sounds nihilistic, that’s also accurate
- ysofunny 3y ago
  > applying intention to evolution is a bad habit I think it boils down to the directionality of time. let me explain applying intention to evolution does mean re-imagining what may have happened, but I put that it's an extremely natural thing to do. when I reimagine some historical sequence of events as if it had intention I am making it easier to remember for me. but this is only realistic in retrospective. this whole argument is also applicable to conpiranoic thinking. what one does in a conspiracy mindset is exactly to attribute agency and intention into events; this is very easily done in retrospect, when we know what the outcome actually was. doing this for future events is difficult and always comes with a risk of guessing wrong (this is why I say this has got to do with time-directionality: looking backwards into the past in contrast with guessing the future) but does this even mean that historical people (the participants of the historical events) knew what would happen in the end? maybe or maybe not. that is not the point. I'm saying that projecting non-existing agency into historical evens is a memorization technique this all becomes really funky whenever anybody assumes the memorization technique (what I say/do to remember) is the same thing as that which I'm actually remembering
  - yieldcrv 3y ago
    memorization for you, interesting. well the first step is admitting. unique to evolution though, this habit assumes that everything is beneficial for navigating the environment aside from just reproduction, or the most beneficial compared to unimagined alternatives that died out and simply can't be observed. it ignores other population ending factors despite that line of population having more beneficial traits to today's environment. the only "evolved because" answer to evolution is "some mutant reproduced", and reality is even more crass than that given how that mutant reproduced a lot
pengaru 3y ago
I can't think of a more effective means of determining if a potential mate is deathly ill than smelling and tasting their mouth, before diving in downstairs.

That wasn’t in my copy of Rudyard Kipling’s “Just So Stories.” A little more seriously, that sounds like a behavior that would be beneficial for many creatures, and yet only a few do anything like that. If it were effective, it’d be common.

selfsimilar 3y ago
Dogs eat other dogs' excrement in part to keep a healthy and diverse gut culture. I prefer kissing.
- thaumasiotes 3y ago
  I have not heard that this is known to be a reason dogs do that - it's more common for them to eat their own feces, which can't have any gut-culture benefit - but it does work in humans, where it's called a "fecal transplant".
- 6510 3y ago
  How can you prefer one thing over the other if you haven't tried both? It's so funny how we are set up to think we are in control but overriding the default here would take some serious effort. Who is in charge really? The gut microbes order specific kinds of food then we obey? Trying to refuse to eat or change the order is pretty hard.
pushedx 3y ago
Dogs sniffing butts?
- shermantanktop 3y ago
  Maybe? It’d have be pretty intense to transfer microbiome diversity.
JoshTko 3y ago
Don't nearly all mammal parents extensively lick their offspring's faces?
LargoLasskhyfv 3y ago
But they lick each other.

yieldcrv 3y ago

applying intention to evolution is a bad habit there are only accidents or happenstance that might turn out to be sex linked traits and not end life before a viable offspring is created if it sounds nihilistic, that’s also accurate

ysofunny 3y ago
> applying intention to evolution is a bad habit I think it boils down to the directionality of time. let me explain applying intention to evolution does mean re-imagining what may have happened, but I put that it's an extremely natural thing to do. when I reimagine some historical sequence of events as if it had intention I am making it easier to remember for me. but this is only realistic in retrospective. this whole argument is also applicable to conpiranoic thinking. what one does in a conspiracy mindset is exactly to attribute agency and intention into events; this is very easily done in retrospect, when we know what the outcome actually was. doing this for future events is difficult and always comes with a risk of guessing wrong (this is why I say this has got to do with time-directionality: looking backwards into the past in contrast with guessing the future) but does this even mean that historical people (the participants of the historical events) knew what would happen in the end? maybe or maybe not. that is not the point. I'm saying that projecting non-existing agency into historical evens is a memorization technique this all becomes really funky whenever anybody assumes the memorization technique (what I say/do to remember) is the same thing as that which I'm actually remembering
- yieldcrv 3y ago
  memorization for you, interesting. well the first step is admitting. unique to evolution though, this habit assumes that everything is beneficial for navigating the environment aside from just reproduction, or the most beneficial compared to unimagined alternatives that died out and simply can't be observed. it ignores other population ending factors despite that line of population having more beneficial traits to today's environment. the only "evolved because" answer to evolution is "some mutant reproduced", and reality is even more crass than that given how that mutant reproduced a lot

pengaru 3y ago

I can't think of a more effective means of determining if a potential mate is deathly ill than smelling and tasting their mouth, before diving in downstairs.