Are there species whose females are more neotenous than women?

Do humans have the most neotenous females?
Are there species where the males are more neotenous than the females?

Please note that I include behavior within neoteny.

All domesticated species, including humans, tend to retain juvenile traits, both male and female.

  1. You seem to be assuming that women are more neotenous than men, but I can’t see any reason to believe that is the case. The loss of pronounced canines, loss of muscle mass, shortened forelimbs, excess body fat etc of humans all indicate that men are more neotenous than females.

  2. There are many of species where the males scarcely leave the larval stage, ranging from angler fish to wasps to barnacles.

  3. There are likewise many species where the female never fully leaves the larval stage, famously bagworms, but plenty of other insects as well. There are also jellyfish where the females remain forever in the polyp stage of their lifecycle and the males swim around to find them.

  4. Compared to the crap that other taxa get up to, tetrapods generally are very conservative. The degree of neoteny in humans is really just cosmetic. Of course, all vertebrates are stuck perpetually in our larval form. Thus we are all very highly neotenous. Within that neotenic state, the actual variation between specie is insignificant. You are looking at a butterfly that is stuck perpetually as a caterpillar and arguing over whether one with legs a micron shorter is more neotenous. It’s kind of meaningless because it’s swamped by the overall degree of neoteny.

I’m not domesticated!

Kayaker, happily divorced dude.

That implies that an ancestor of vertebrates had insect-like metamorphosis in their life cycle. Is that true, or did the lineage leading to vertebrates just never develop a multi-form life cycle? And even if true, you could just as well say that vertebrates hatch as adults.

(But good examples of organisms with radical neoteny).

Humans? Women develop breasts. Men begin life with everything we’re ever going to need (other than pubic hair and other things which are common to both genders.)

You’re just feral, then.

Actively avoiding TNR.

Am I being oversensitive, or are any of the other women on this board feeling just a touch insulted by the implication here? :dubious:

Higher chordates resemble the tadpole-like larvae of tunicates. It has been proposed that they originated by neoteny of such larval stages.

I’d very much like the OP to clarify exactly what he’s talking about. I also suspect my wish will not be fulfilled.

TNR?

Oh, we are with you, sister

It’s a TLA*.

*Three Letter Acronym

(sorry. Trap, Neuter, Release. Typically a feral cat thang):smiley:

I can’t speak for women on this board, but that got a dubious look from me, too.

Good one. Thanks.

The whole concept of neoteny doesn’t make sense to me. If it is defined as “the persistence of juvenile traits into adulthood”, then what makes those traits “juvenile”, considering adults now have them too?

It seems to me it’s a time game. If these traits were recently “juvenile-only” traits that adults lost, but now we’re beginning to see more of these traits last until adulthood, I can see that requiring a special term. But generations and centuries down the line, when these traits are common in adults, are they really juvenile traits anymore?

Skimming Wikipedia, they describe it more as a slowing down of the aging process. In other words, the juvenile traits still go away, they just last longer into young adulthood than they used to. But that doesn’t jibe with calling lifetime traits “neotenous”, whether it’s decreased body hair on women or permanent larval stage in barnacles.

Cool! Thanks.

Yep, feeling more than a touch insulted.

It indicates persistence of traits that were typical of juveniles in ancestral forms, as may be indicated by fossils or the developmental course of close relatives.

It’s clearest in groups in which most species have larval forms, and metamorphose into very different adults. Some species may achieve breeding condition (and are just adults) while still in the typical juvenile form for the group.