retention of juvenile characteristics by sexually mature individuals.
n. (Gr. neos, young; teinein, to extend, stretch) the retention of juvenile characteristics in the adult individual.
Retaining larval characteristics after sexual maturity has been reached. The term neoteny is generally used interchangeably with the terms PAEDOMORPHISM, and PAEDOGENESIS.
Retention of juvenile features in sexually mature adult animals. Neoteny frequently correlates with recent evolution of the species (like Homo sapiens).
The unusually prolonged stage of infantile dependency characteristic of humans (more than of other species). According to Weston LaBarre in The Ghost Dance, this is the stage when children are most prone to subjective mental states expressed in irrational fears and anxieties, fantasies, and nightmares. Fantastic stories such as fairy tales and myths have greatest appeal to children at this stage, because such tales appeal to their psychological needs. For example, the story of Jack and the Beanstalk dramatizes a child's irrational fears of the "giants" of his world, the adults. The Cyclops episode of The Odyssey is another, more complex, example.
retention of some juvenile characteristics in adulthood
The retention of juvenile body characters in the adult state, or the occurrence of adult characters in the juvenile state.
some amphibians are able to become reproductively mature in the larval state and never mature into the adult form; retain larval characteristics.
Persistence of some larval or immature characteristics into adulthood.
an evolutionary trend to be born earlier so that development is cut off at an earlier stage and juvenile characteristics are retained in adults of the species
The condition of retaining larval form and behavior even as a mature individual Certain salamanders in particular are neotenic.
An evolutionary process by which organismal development is retarded relative to sexual maturation; produces a descendant that reaches sexual maturity while retaining a morphology characteristic of the preadult or larval stage of an ancestor.
The attainment of adulthood (sexual maturity) while retaining some normally juveile features, through truncation of ontogeny.
Neoteny ( meaning "new stretch") is a method of reproduction in which the an offspring is produced while an organism is still in, or maintains many characteristics of, its larval or juvenile stage. Salamanders exhibit neoteny; they maintain gills and other larval features when they are reproductively mature. Neoteny is also known as pedogenesis or paedogenesis.
Refers to the situation where an animal retains throughout its life features which, in its ancestors would be considered typical of an immature (possibly even fatal) stage in the life cycle.
Biological process in which certain juvenile physical characteristics are retained into maturity. Based largely on anatomical comparisons between humans and apes, neoteny holds that what gives humans edge over other species is how much we retain qualities of childhood into adult years. Cited as biological basis for rejuvenile phenomenon; anthropologist Ashley Montagu concluded that "The truth about the human species is that in body, spirit, feeling and conduct we are designed to grow and develop in ways that maximize childlike traits."
paedomorphosis produced by retardation of somatic development.
attainment of sexual maturity in the larval or juvenile stage. Speeding up of sexual development. See also paedomorphosis
Neoteny is the retention, by adults in a species, of traits previously seen only in juveniles (pedomorphosis/paedomorphosis), and is a subject studied in the field of developmental biology. In neoteny, the physiological (or somatic) development of an animal or organism is slowed or delayed. Ultimately this process results in the retention, in the adults of a species, of juvenile physical characteristics well into maturity.