Does anyone know much about animal mating in the wild? Do wild animals commonly mate with their near relatives? For instance, male fish can't possibly know which eggs in the water are from their mothers or daughters; they must fertilize indiscriminately. What about mammals? Do bull lions mate with their daughters after driving other males away? Lots of mammals operate in groups with a single dominant male that mates with all the females, which must include his own relatives.
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Bonobos.
Obviously, you've not argued sexual morality with a promiscuous person with a background in biology, otherwise you, too, would be familiar with this primate who is closest to man on the evolutionary tree and that humps more frequently than we smile.
Well that's not technically correct. Bonobos engage in sexual behavior with just about any other member of their troop frequently, but it is not often "mating." Bonobos engage in "sexual" touching and even oral sex and "humping" frequently. But these encounters are designed to reinforce group status and interpersonal relationships. It's not about "sex" (as we understand it) or about procreation. Bonobo sex is a lot like a handshake or a smile between two humans. Mating for procreation (ie when a female is in "season") is a little different, and follows different patterns.
In mammals, frequently either males or females (depending on the species)are kicked out of the family group at puberty, and members of the "wandering" gender either live solitary lives except for mating time (like lions), or are accepted into a new family group (some Primates). I'm not sure about lower animals, but I doubt it occurs frequently except in extreme cases, since many species "spread out" once they leave the nest.
EW.
That's my intellectual thought contribution for the evening.
Ew, says the girl whose fish eat their own poop.
My husband and I breed hamsters, and if you don't seperate the babies from the parents soon enough, or the boys and girls from each other soon enough there will be a whole lotta inbreeding going on. When buying a girl hamster from a pet store, you need to see if there's girls and boys in the same cage together, or else you might very well be buying a pregnant hamster.
Of course, for hamsters, inbreeding is not quite so much of a problem as it is for people. In fact my brother, who uses hamsters for lab research, says that they imbreed them purposely in order to reduce genetic variables.
Also, re eating their own poop, I would also like to add that hamster babies eat their mothers poop in order to seed their digestive tracts with the right bacteria to break down the stuff they eat. Fascinating, I know. :)
Oh, great. Now you can just that image of Simba and Kiara doin' it out of my head.
Or Sirabi and Simba, for that matter....
*shake shake shake*