A recent statistical analysis found that the animal specimens in the museum also originally had "sexism" of "more men than women". Is this a preference of scientists or is there any objective reason?
Written by Zhang Tiankan (columnist) Editor / Ji Jingjing
Photo courtesy of Visual China New Media Editor/Chen Xuanzhi
In modern society, the concept of "sexism" has been extended to all fields, and even animal specimens are difficult to escape. Natalie Cooper, a life science researcher at the Natural History Museum in London, england, and others analyzed nearly 2.5 million specimens in five collections in different countries (including specimens with a history of more than 100 years) and found that although about half of the bird specimens were undetermined, males accounted for up to 60% of the specimens with determined sex. In the case of mammals, male mammals accounted for 52% of the sex-determined specimens.
The results are similar to a previous study at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, where a study of animal fossils such as bison and brown bears collected in the wild and in large museums showed that 74 percent of bison and 64 percent of bears were males. Of the 19 mammals represented, 17 are predominantly male, with Pterodactyls (consisting of bats) and Phidders (including anteaters and sloths) being the only taxa with more females than males.
In the past, people explained nature and society often used to summarize "all things are numbered", and now people explain that nature and society also seem to fall into the vision of all things gender differences or discrimination, difference is neutral, and discrimination has a politically incorrect meaning. And that's how researchers explain it.
Cooper said, "We suspect that this can find a preference for male animals, because it is humans who do science, and people have a natural preference for male animals." Because, in the 19th century, animal collectors were mostly male, and although this phenomenon is currently changing, the field is still dominated by men. Therefore, the ratio of males to females in animal specimens has remained more male than female after 130 years.
There is some truth to this explanation, and it can be analogous to the phenomenon of scientific achievements and achievement recognition, for example, the Nobel Prize awards only about 3% of female scientists, which is obviously sexist. The reason, of course, is that the scientific researchers in this world are mostly men, and most of the people involved in scientific research are men, and most of the people who select scientific research results are men.
Even if there are biased and preference factors for the acquisition of scientific research results, it is also based on the fact that the development of social history and the operation of society are the result of the evolution of the majority of male participants, which of course requires future social actions to change, such as the training of female researchers and female participants in other fields, in order to change the current reality of gender preference or discrimination.
However, Cooper's explanation also seems to violate a basic law of nature, if only the two sexes are the world (in fact, there may be more genders, such as neutrality), then the same sex repulsion, heterosexual repulsion is undeniable. If it is a male collector, it is natural to pity the jade, it should be extremely appreciative of the female, or the female is mostly appreciated, not the male, so it is in line with the laws of nature to collect more female specimens. Of course, the possible explanation is that people are different from animals, and they are not comparable. The charm and beauty of female animals are difficult to enter the eyes of men.
Even so, there are a number of factors and phenomena that should be considered, one of which is that specimens of male animals are readily available and collected. Just like human males, male animals will play a very "work" game under the stimulation of androgens, make very crazy behaviors, they will fight for food and mates, and they will also compete for their own ability, just like men's drag racing, they will inevitably fall into the pit of not dying, more is self-seeking death.
Another article, published in Contemporary Biological Research in 2017, analyzed the remains of 95 mammoths and found that 69 percent were male mammoths, largely due to the behavior of male mammoths. Male mammoths and bison often engage in dangerous activities with high mortality rates, and often do stupid things, such as doing something curious to kill a cat, accidentally trapped in a tar pit, the latter and similar narrow valley pits and other dirty places, both to let them fall into the dead, but also easy to preserve their corpses, and some even preserve the remains for thousands of years, until they are found and made into specimens. Similarly, male brown bears are more willing to hang around than females, while females are willing to stay in nests, so it is not surprising that male brown bears have more crashes and accidental deaths than females, and their specimens dominate fossils.
Another reason for the large number of male specimens of animals is the opposite of Cooper's preference for male animals by male researchers, but the preference of male researchers and hunters for female animals, and even pity for jade, and is directly related to people's long-term vision of ecological protection and sustainable development, at least not exhaustively. Because researchers and hunters do not want to kill female animals, only if the female is retained, they will live two, two, four, and four, and more animals will be obtained in the future, whether they are eaten or made into specimens. Stay in the green mountains, why worry about no firewood! That's why more male animals are killed to eat and make specimens.
There is also a basic fact that some male animals are indeed larger and more eye-catching than females, such as the majestic mane of male lions, and some animals due to evolutionary reasons, males must attract females with excellent shape and color, thus forming a beautiful and gorgeous decorative appearance in evolution, such as the opening screen of male peacocks, and the male birds of paradise birds are colorful, and the males of long-tailed widow birds have long tail feathers with a length of 50 cm, while the tail feathers of females are normal, only 7 cm, And the male beautiful nose-covering windbird, when courting the female, hides its head into its wings and displays its glowing blue feathers, transforming itself from an ordinary black bird into a seemingly "headless ovate", like a ufo trying to land.
All these appearances and behaviors are not only the survival of male animals and male birds, but also can be seen as their "non-immortality", not only to attract the attention and discovery of predators and be preyed upon, but also to escape the capture of humans to make specimens, which is not only a display of human booty, but also a study and appreciation of the variety and strange shapes of animals.
All of this has little to do with sexism and is just a natural phenomenon. It is as if human beings have designed a binary world of 0s and 1s in the yin and yang that imitate nature. Men and women are also such 0 and 1, in fact, can also be expressed as real and virtual, existence and non-existence, masculinity and femininity, etc., neither can discriminate against 0, nor do you have to discriminate against 1, without 0 and 1 can not be accomplished, without yang and yin can not become natural and social. In such a world, it is difficult to say that there is sexism.
Of course, the phenomenon of "more men and fewer women" in animal specimens in natural museums or scientific research institutions will also cause incomplete cognition and understanding of animals and life phenomena, and long-term development may be harmful to science. Therefore, it is possible to collect more female specimens by increasing the number of female researchers and collectors as proposed by the researchers, but it is more possible to consciously let both male and female researchers pay attention to the balance when collecting specimens, so that the male and female animal specimens are roughly equivalent, which may solve this problem.
bibliography
1.natalie cooper , alexander l. bond , joshua l. davis , roberto portela miguez , louise tomsett and kristofer m. helgen，sex biases in bird and mammal natural history collections，proceedings of the royal society b，16 october 2019，volume 286issue 1913
https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2019.2025
2. Many male specimens in famous museums Animal specimens are also "patriarchal"? Global Times, October 24, 2019
https://news.sina.com.cn/w/2019-10-24/doc-iicezzrr4516418.shtml
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