(April 4, 2014 at 7:30 am)alpha male Wrote: FWIW:I can tell you from experience that gerbils will continue to mate even when there are too many of them. They deal with the issue of overpopulation by... literally... eating the faces off of their newborn.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overpopulation
Quote:Some species seem to have a measure of self-control, by which individuals refrain from mating when they find themselves in a crowded environment. This voluntary abstinence may be induced by stress or by pheromones.Unfortunately no reference is given, so take it as you will.
I recall learning something about this in a rodent species in school, but that was a long time ago and it's difficult to search for. Most hits seem to concern human overpopulation no matter how I go about it.
The lesson? Don't buy a male/female pair as pets.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
