The missing human baculum: a victim of conspecific aggression and budding self-awareness?,Mammal Review

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The missing human baculum: a victim of conspecific aggression and budding self-awareness?
Mammal Review ( IF 4.3 ) Pub Date : 2021-01-10 , DOI: 10.1111/mam.12237
Ivan Jakovlić _{1,

2}

Affiliation

Unlike most primates and all other great apes, humans Homo sapiens do not possess a baculum (penile bone). I discuss the shortcomings of previous hypotheses to explain the loss of the baculum, argue that they fail to explain it fully, and show that the evolutionary history of this loss remains enigmatic. I also propose a new hypothesis: that conspecific aggression, in combination with the development of self-awareness, may have played a role in the loss. If the presence of a baculum exacerbated the prevalence and severity of penile injuries resulting from blunt trauma to a flaccid penis, increasing ability to foresee the consequences of their actions would also enable hominins to realise that these injuries are a useful tool in male–male competition. This behavioural innovation, planned conspecific aggression with the goal of temporary exclusion of competitors from the breeding pool, would create an environment in which a genetic mutation for a penis without a baculum (or with an unossified baculum) would strongly increase the fitness of the mutant phenotype. Along with the hominin propensity for social learning and cultural transmission, this hypothetical scenario may explain why this phenotype became fixed in all human populations.

中文翻译：

失踪的人类细菌：同种攻击和萌芽的自我意识的受害者？

与大多数灵长类动物和所有其他类人猿不同，人类智人没有阴茎骨（阴茎骨）。我讨论了先前用于解释杆状细胞丢失的假设的缺点，认为它们未能完全解释它，并表明这种丢失的进化历史仍然是个谜。我还提出了一个新假设：同种攻击与自我意识的发展相结合，可能在损失中发挥了作用。如果生殖器的存在加剧了由钝性外伤导致的阴茎损伤的患病率和严重程度，那么增加预见其行为后果的能力也将使古人类意识到这些损伤是男性-男性竞争中的有用工具. 这种行为创新，有计划的同种攻击，目的是暂时将竞争对手排除在繁殖池之外，将创造一个环境，在这种环境中，没有阴茎骨（或具有未骨化的阴茎骨）的阴茎的基因突变将大大增加突变表型的适应性。随着人类社会学习和文化传播的倾向，这种假设的情况可以解释为什么这种表型在所有人群中都是固定的。

更新日期：2021-01-10

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