[pfannkuchen]

> like sea-horses

I don’t think it’s fair to represent an edge case, “noteworthy for being different” type species as being just one example out of many. As far as I’m aware the behavior exhibited by sea horses is extremely rare, and I recall it being highlighted as such in, at least, The Selfish Gene. Can you think of other examples?

[Shorel]

I would not paint it that way. For fish, it is often the case the male takes care of the eggs, and the females are free of any responsibility.

There are other behaviours in the sea, and they are in general so different to mammals that we can consider them as alien.

I would even say mammals are the edge case, just by virtue of having a fewer number of species than fish, arthropods, insects, and almost any other clad.

You are simply more used to mammals, to the point it seems the only natural behaviour.

[pfannkuchen]

Yes, I suppose you’re right that I am only considering “species who raise their young after birth”.

I don’t see egg laying species behavior as being very representative of the game theoretic patterns in childcare species behavior, though.

Ditching after birth vs raising the young is clearly such a massively important game theoretic dimension that it likely substantially determines the workable ranges for most other dimensions. How can we make conclusions across such separate subspaces of organism game space?

[sjducb]

Can you cite some sources?

[Shorel]

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2973910/