Gene imprinting

Bottle_of_Smoke

Was reading Human Instincts by Robert Winston there & he mentions how the male gene will push for a large baby whereas the female will push for a smaller one.

A larger baby is a threat for the woman so her genes will "want" a smaller baby - more likely chance of her being killed by childbirth/having less future children the bigger the baby she has- thus passing on less genes in the future.

I think the male pushes for a larger one as a large baby would stand a greater chance of survival.

This leads to a kind of struggle between the two & you get a mix depending on the strength/dominancy of the genes. Think this is the reason Ligers(when a male lion breeds with a female tiger) are huge wheres Tigions(Male tiger/Female Lion) are small.

Although I can see why this makes sense on the female side (Humans) surely a large baby would have been less likely to survive than a small baby in general - If the mother dies it would be very difficult for a father to hunt & raise a baby. I'm talking about early humans of course.

So I can't quite understand how a large baby would have been as likely to survive & pass on it's genes. THe book didn't cover this, can anyone explain?

MooseJam

I would guess a large baby would be less in danger of being eaten by predators throughout its lifecycle, just a quick guess, and then theres the fighting over females, the bigger you are the more likely you are to get the female and see your genes passed on