It is definitely more successful than the previous strategy in one of the ancestors was (or else it wouldn’t have been selected for), and mutations that reduce the dementia and allow for more reproductive cycles seen to negatively influence reproduction in either fitness or number of the offspring or chance of successful reproduction, so the trait persists.
Since this is a numbers game, even miniscule differences in reproductive success (which isn’t clearly measurable in the wild) have a large impact on genetic drift.
Since the origin of the current behavior lies in the past, it might not be possible to see what evolutionary pressure induced the behavior in the first place.
It is definitely more successful than the previous strategy in one of the ancestors was (or else it wouldn’t have been selected for), and mutations that reduce the dementia and allow for more reproductive cycles seen to negatively influence reproduction in either fitness or number of the offspring or chance of successful reproduction, so the trait persists.
Since this is a numbers game, even miniscule differences in reproductive success (which isn’t clearly measurable in the wild) have a large impact on genetic drift.
Since the origin of the current behavior lies in the past, it might not be possible to see what evolutionary pressure induced the behavior in the first place.