Observation that human foreskins are pretty large doesn't mean they're pretty useful. They would be modified exactly *because* something about them is in the way.
Impetus? Evolution doesn't work by what it is most needed to do apropos of nothing. Variation needs to exist and certain traits be beneficial before it can make changes within a population.
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I have a duplex renal system and so does my mother. It caused both of us problems in pregnancy so we could only have one child. My daughter did not inherit it and so it has been naturally selected out. If it had been beneficial, we'd have had more children & passed it on.
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That isn't natural selection. That's just being lucky in not passing it on. If you hadn't been able to reproduce, it would have been NS'ed out.
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That is natural selection. It made us only able to have one child who had a 50% chance of inheriting it. If we'd been able to have more children, there would be more copies of it now. Instead, it came to an end with the first child who didn't inherit it.
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Natural selection works by the number of offspring a trait enables you to have and to survive. Someone who can have 10 healthy kids has ten times the biological fitness of someone who can have one & passes on 10X as many copies of their fitter genes.
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I agree.
End of conversation
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Exactly. So what would be the beneficial side of changing the functional primate foreskin into our oversized version?
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We don't know. Several hypotheses exist but we often don't know exactly why parts of us look like they do - whatever advantage they once conferred is either gone or is not apparent. One suggestion is protection from seeds & sharp plants before clothes.
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Wouldn't our primate cousins have at least the same level of necessity for it then?
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It seems not. Might be something to do with being more exposed on standing upright. Just a hypothesis tho. Clearly, they didn't need it coz they didn't develop it.
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What are we arguing again? I have the feeling we're on a side track...
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Oh, I don't know. I must start to wind down for the night, anyway.
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Reading back it seems that I argue that there is some use to circumcision. Which I stand by. That doesn't mean that infant circumcision is then ethically OK, of course.
End of conversation
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