Originally Posted by
Grendel
I can get that specialization - which creates individuals that only work within a group of sufficient numbers because their tasks are socialized - is r-selected on the surface, but the specialization we have wouldn't be possible if not for our overgrown infant skull size.
That, in turn, can only happen when you have a parent that invests in few offspring for a long time, as the giant skull takes decades to grow in, and you have a creature with a stupidly long and vulnerable infancy.
This, combined with the brain they have, is the reason humans are more prone to sickness, perversion, and drawn-out suffering than any other animal. Larvae that don't hunt from the minute they hatch would not be possible without k Selection, so that's the deep root of why our race is innately diseased. A proper larva bursts out of the caterpillar it was incubating in on day one ready to fend for itself, and flies freely goring its prey to death with its venomous egg-layer as an adult. THAT is a proper life cycle.
Don't mistake k Selection with the invincible roach. K selection is more like the pale bony accountant who dies if he stands in the sun too long, whose children get born with tay-sachs or schizophrenia. R-selection is rarely that drawn out and cruel with its punishments, it just makes sure the death is clean and quick when you don't make the cut. I'd rather be the roach any day.