Uploaded January 2014 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago

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How animals balance the number of offspring they produce against the amount of efforts they expend on caring for their offspring. (Don't forget that animals are not consciously planning the number of their offspring. If the genes in them do not make them achieve the optimal in offspring, surviving to reproductive age, those gene die out. Only genes that make animals achieve that optimal, tend to be passed on to the next generation.)

Ed Sexton "Dawkins and the Selfish Gene"