Why do Orks from Warhammer 40K have nipples?
Why do Orks from Warhammer 40K have nipples?
They are supposed to be grown from spores, so what use are ork nipples?
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What use are nipples on males?
Lick one and find out
Hmmm. Can't say I've licked one personally, but I see what you're seeing. I guess I meant an actual use for them. More of a rhetorical question I guess.
I guess I meant an actual use for them.
Licking is an actual use.
It is. I wasn't being specific enough, sorry. Actual use in terms of evolutionary fitness. There are no reasons for them evolutionarily other than they are a byproduct of fetal development.
Anything that makes people hornier and more likely to procreate is an evolutionary advantage.
I suppose you're right. It's not just things that help things live longer or thrive in a specific environment.
That's the thing with natural selection though, as long as a trait isn't deleterious and it's common enough it'll generally stick around. There's no pressure for males to not have nipples.
Totally agree with your point. But it's also not something that will actively promote fitness.
Doesn't matter. There's no reason to not have nipples, and going down the evolution rabbit hole to change that isn't worth the random mutations that are more likely to just straight up kill males during development or something. In biology fitness just means the ability to successfully reproduce, not actually who's stronger or more efficient. Your entire body is built on the concept of, "good enough to get the job done."
Agreed. All about the ability to reproduce, not actual strength or "fitness" as most people would think of.
But yeah, they're more or less vestigial as far as I'm concerned. Good point on it not worth getting rid of because that would probably be more detrimental (as you stated).
Because males were females until the right amount of chemicals were introduced to the fetus. Take enough estrogen and males can produce milk and no longer have useless nipples.
sexual stimulation
They actually are capable of producing a small amount of milk, it's just that doing that requires so much effort for so little reward that feeding babies became the mother's job after a few thousand generations of mammals being a thing.