Did a little experiment of my own...take the results with a grain of salt....

[netti02]

Thanks atomic. Not going too strict just less snacking (im a shift worker) and abit more walking etc. With 4 boys i find it hard to fit everything in 😂

Mum to 4 Boys awaiting her Princess

[Lucinda]

Wow how interesting and exciting!

[coralsky]

I have only just discovered this thread!! Your research is so cool & exciting!!!
I cant wait for the next instalment!
FAB!! xxx

[Kitty0911]

Sorry this is a little late! I had HORRIBLE morning sickness and put off doing this round of LE/HE dieters by a few weeks. Babies were born a couple weeks ago and I have genders ready to add to my little stats

This time I did both an HE and an LE female. Focus was on the same thing- diet.

HE female: 8 pups- 6 male and 2 female

LE female: 8 pups- 3 male and 5 female

I'm a tiny bit disappointed with the results this time. They had the same number of babies vs. the HE were having more and LE were having less. They both had the average number of babies that my rats have with no diet change. BUT there still was a difference in gender ratio from the norm, so the diet is obviously doing something. I'm wondering if maybe since there were two females gestating at the same time that somehow that affected their number of offspring more? They were caged together after the "attempts" and I wonder if that might have had an effect on how many babies they had. Or I'm thinking too much into it and it was just a fluke.

So I believe, if I am doing my math right, that the LE success rate for rats is 76%-77% and HE success rate for rats is 81%.

[atomic sagebrush]

the thing to remember (and everyone should keep this in mind with studies too because a lot of studies are just published after ONE test run - usually the one that verifies the researcher's supposition o.O) is that there's always going to be variation in the results. That's ok. We want to see overall the results and over time the trend will become obvious.

I actually do think 2 gestating together could affect the results somewhat - if a mother thought she and her offspring had genetic competition she might be more motivated to have more babies even if it took a toll on her in the long term, than a mother without genetic competition, if that makes sense. Of course these things happen totally unconsiously thru biological mechanisms we have no clue about, but still the end result is that organisms do whatever it takes to give their genes the best chances of being handed down to future generations.

Thank you again so much for this!

[Princess Mom]

This is so awesome!!!! This is why I'm sticking to LE diet for 12 weeks or more it is simply amazing.
Also hope your baby #4 is a girl
I'll be trying in March. Best of luck to you

[meoab]

I seriously enjoyed reading your little experience and I am confident enough to say it has influence. I don't do any researches like this, however, I keep a note of people who got or are pregnant of boys and girls. I note what kind of diet they did (in my mind lol) and what their lifestyle was or is like. I noticed that for some age+diet had more influence and for the other workout+diet and lifestyle. In general, the ones with boys had food that was more 'rich' compared to the women with girls.

I would love to do a research on human beings lol.

[TaytumJ]

This is so cool! Can't believe I missed this early 2015...I mean, I was here on the site months before so I must have just been spacey! [emoji12]

I love the results! Obviously rats and humans are different, but, there is a lot of research I've read in counseling/therapy/psychological disorders on rats and their responses to stimuli and environments and their brain/body response is the same as human responses. A lot of them are psychological and stress related studies, but rats and humans do in fact have some things in common that make correlating results pretty accurate. So this is so, so neat to me!

Also, I love rats. They're so smart and neat creatures! I'd love to have one if I didn't have a dachshund!


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[atomic sagebrush]

Rats do have a lot in commmon with humans in terms of brain formation, metabolism, and immune system. They are also omnivores, which may make some difference too. So many of the diet studies are done in herbivores and I just think there is no comparison.

Overall though (and I think this thread is awesome don't get me wrong) I would love to see more tests done in primates and sheep, oddly enough sheep are a pretty good analogue for humans in terms of fertility - unfortunately they still have the herbivore issue and are "harems" and all of that but they have 1-3 babies like humans do. The thing with rats that complicates it is that they have litters so they can "afford" to pop out some boys and girls and gamble that they will survive. I wish badgers made for good testing animals because they are like humans in a lot of ways too (omnivores and don't have litters in addition to a couple other similarities) There are also a lot of birds that also have a lot in common with humans, weirdly enough - 1-2 babies at a time, dads are involved with the raising the kids and the competition for mates functions very similarly to humans, where the females are often choosing the males instead of males fighting each other for dominance.

I have reason to believe that humans are the single most likely to be affected by Trivers-Willard, so if we see results in animals, lots of animals, it may very well be that not only does this correlate to humanity, but it's even stronger a connection. We have the fewest offspring over our lives that take the longest to raise to adulthood meaning there's a lot to be gained by having the offspring that has the best shot of survival to pass down genes.

[amandaj001]

Sorry this is a little late! I had HORRIBLE morning sickness and put off doing this round of LE/HE dieters by a few weeks. Babies were born a couple weeks ago and I have genders ready to add to my little stats

This time I did both an HE and an LE female. Focus was on the same thing- diet.

HE female: 8 pups- 6 male and 2 female

LE female: 8 pups- 3 male and 5 female

I'm a tiny bit disappointed with the results this time. They had the same number of babies vs. the HE were having more and LE were having less. They both had the average number of babies that my rats have with no diet change. BUT there still was a difference in gender ratio from the norm, so the diet is obviously doing something. I'm wondering if maybe since there were two females gestating at the same time that somehow that affected their number of offspring more? They were caged together after the "attempts" and I wonder if that might have had an effect on how many babies they had. Or I'm thinking too much into it and it was just a fluke.

So I believe, if I am doing my math right, that the LE success rate for rats is 76%-77% and HE success rate for rats is 81%.

Do you know what you are having yet?