Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Perpetual Motion Machinery

The ordinary flow between folks is all about dominance and submission, what Jan Cox called, your pack position. Given this universality among people, it occurred to me to wonder how come my cats exhibit dominant and submissive behavior. Cats are not pack animals, and not really even tame creatures. Yet I do have a cat who is casually dominant over the other kitties. He gets the best chair, eats first etc. The first thing that occurred to me is that seeing domsub behavior in the common house cat suggested this behavior may be a general mammalian trait--therefore very early, very deep. And such may be the case, but I got sidetracked when one at least of the reasons cats exhibit this behavior came to mind. Sex. Male cats have to be aggressive, they have to perpetuate their kittiness over as much of the planet as possible. Female cats though, can afford to wait to be noticed, a mere meow and they have all the attention they need. Perhaps it all comes down to a differential just so that motion never ceases.

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