The Colliding Mice Galaxies

NGC 4676 (the Mice Galaxies) are two spiral galaxies about 290 million light-years away. They are in the process of colliding and merging.

This photograph was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2002. The size of this combined galaxy is 760,000 light years across. In the background of the Mice Galaxies, there are at least 3300 galaxies, at distances up to 13 billion light-years.

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Differential Investment in Procreating in Terms of Money and Risks

In her column at Psychology Today ("How to Train Your Boyfriend"), Evolutionary Psychologist Diane Fleischman illustrates the time investment differential in terms of money:

We know women have had to carry a baby for 9 months. But over our evolutionary history, a mother would have had to breastfeed for 3 years, on average, before the baby would be weaned. What's the minimum amount of investment a man could put in to have a baby? Let's be generous and say the minimum amount is an hour. This is called "minimum obligatory parental investment" and in human men and women, the asymmetry is bigger than in most other species. . . . If you think about the asymmetry between men and women in the minimum amount they would have to invest to make a baby in terms of dollar amount- a man would have to invest $1 and a woman would have to invest $32,000.

In her article, Fleishman points out many difference in behavior between men and woman (see the extensive list below), as well as reproductive risks, stemming from this procreation investment asymmetry.

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