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by toasterlovin 3636 days ago
The problem with the aunt/uncle theory is the math. A non-breeding sibling would have to enable their siblings to have two additional children (above and beyond the children they would have had anyway) for each child that the non-breeding sibling forgoes having themselves for the strategy to even hit break even, from a genetic point of view.

That's a steep hill to climb.

1 comments

Because the number of siblings is close to number of children it actually comes to each breeding sibling to have extra two children survive into adulthood. This becomes even less steep if we remember that cousins can also be included in the math.

For example the gay person becomes a village healer and can spent time on that precisely because he/she doesn't have own children to look after.