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by amelius 41 days ago
Yes, we should highlight failures (if you can call it that) more, not just when talking about apes but with ourselves as well. Otherwise we're prone to survivorship bias.
1 comments

These are not failures. Failure to reproduce does not mean they do not contribute to their society. If that were true, the male/female ratio would have evolved differently.
This doesn't follow. In animal societies where males are useless apart from their reproductive value, males are still produced at approximately 1:1. This is evolution optimizing for the reproductive success of the individual, not of the population, and is called Fisher's Principle.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisher%27s_principle