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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. What happens to baby birds if the parent does not find enough food for the group?

2. According to Dawkins, how common is it for males to help raise the young?

3. What does Wynne-Edwards suggest that animals do to communicate overpopulation?

4. What happens to cuckoo eggs that look dissimilar to the host eggs they replace?

5. What does Trivers look at breeding as?

Short Essay Questions

1. What factors does Dawkins mention that affect the human birthrate and population?

2. What examples does Dawkins give of male animals resisting raising offspring that's not their own?

3. Explain the conflict between Wynne-Edwards and Dawkins over territory behavior.

4. What may happen to guillemot eggs, and what is the adaptation of guillemots to deal with this?

5. What is the result of Dawkins' game theory analysis of male and female sexual and childrearing behaviors?

6. What does higher PI mean, in R.L. Trivers' ideas?

7. How does Dawkins describe female cells versus male cells?

8. What does Dawkins cite that makes human beings exceptions to the idea that genes for having too large a number of children die out?

9. According to Dawkins, in what ways does weaning benefit an older child?

10. When and why are gulls' offspring in danger?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Dawkins attributes many attitudes and beliefs to things people want to be true. Discuss how what people want to believe affects people's perception of science in Dawkins' book.

1) Why does Dawkins say that people want to believe in group selection? What affect has this had on evolutionary thought?

2) Why does Dawkins say that people want to believe that parents' relationships with children are an exception to rules of evolution? Are Dawkins' concerns valid?

3) In what other ways do people's desire to believe certain things affect perceptions of the concepts in the book?

Essay Topic 2

Discuss aggression within a species in Dawkins' book.

1) Why does Dawkins raise the question of cannibalism as a potentially viable food source for species, and what are his conclusions about the question?

2) How does Dawkins analyze aggression between members of a species? Are his arguments convincing?

3) What various personality types does Dawkins identify in regard to aggression? How simplified is this model compared to the natural world?

Essay Topic 3

Discuss the distinctions between humanity and other species in Dawkins' work.

1) In Dawkins' book, how does he treat humanity similarly to and differently from other species?

2) What does Dawkins believe makes humanity unique? How does this relate to Dawkins' theory of the selfish gene?

3) What implications does Dawkins' theory have for human beings?

(see the answer keys)

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