Sex and evolution

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Last updated 3-7-07

-- Can humans mate with other animals? - By Torie Bosch - Slate Magazine; Nov. 14, 2006; slate.com

-- Homosexual Animals Out of the Closet By Sara Goudarzi; 16 November 2006; livescience.com

-- Homo on the Range Gay Marriage in the Animal Kingdom - International - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News By Christoph Seidler; October 25, 2006; spiegel.de

-- Mating Game: The Really Wild Kingdom By Jeanna Bryner; 14 November 2006; livescience.com

-- Birds do it, bees do it...Is homosexuality natural? by Martin Fletcher; January 03, 2007; timesonline.co.uk

-- The Painful Realities of Hyena Sex By Bjorn Carey; 26 April 2006; livescience.com

-- Sex and the seahorse by Steve Connor; 19 January 2007; news.independent.co.uk

-- Chimps Go Ape Over Older Females by Michael Balter; 20 November 2006; sciencenow.sciencemag.org

-- Male Chimps Prefer Older Mates Rob Stein; November 27, 2006; Page A08; washingtonpost.com

"In an ancestral environment of truly monogamous mating, there would have been no need for females to have orgasm or for men to adjust ejaculate size. Both are adaptations to a spicy sex life."

"A woman's capacity for orgasm depends not on her partner's sexual skill but on her subconscious evaluation of his genetic merits."

"Women's orgasm has little to do with love. Or experience."

"The men with the best genes make the worst mates."

"Women are no more built for monogamy than men are. They are designed to keep their options open."

"Women fake orgasm to divert a partner's attention from their infidelities."

-- The Orgasm Wars Evolutionary biologists think female orgasms may pick the best sperm. by PT staff; psychologytoday.com; Jan/Feb 96

-- Rutgers researchers scientifically link dancing ability to mate quality 21-Dec-2005; Contact: Carl Blesch cblesch@ur.rutgers.edu 732-932-7084 x616 Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey

-- Males Have Adapted To Battle With Competing Sperm; Association for Psychological Science; February 12, 2007; sciencedaily.com

-- Romance, schmomance -- Natural selection continues even after sex

-- Bizarre, Almost Useless and Interesting Facts about our World - Animals and Creatures

-- Natural selection may be driving the beautiful people to have girls

-- Let's Have More Teen Pregnancy

-- Results of Secret Nazi Breeding Program: Ordinary Folks - New York Times By MARK LANDLER; November 7, 2006; nytimes.com

-- Whale-dolphin hybrid has baby wholphin - Science - MSNBC.com; AP; April 15, 2005; msnbc.msn.com

"...there was probably a co-evolution between fur-loss on the face or rump"

-- Colour vision evolved to spot our blushes by Roxanne Khamsi; 10 February 2006; newscientist.com

"...it would make sense that crowding, and stress, might cause the human body to secrete more pheromones and other sexual hormones to persuade us we should be lovers, not fighters -- in other words to behave more like our bonobo cousins than our common chimp cousins."

"...the church and state want you to be locked and isolated in your nuclear family, not comparing notes with others in your community and loving them more than God and Nation. Their control over us is threatened by the liberation that a polyamory lifestyle and a community deeply bonded by love could bring about, so both church and state have strict laws trying to prevent it."

"So instead of easing the stress of close proximity and scarcity, as nature intended, our rampant sexual desires paradoxically increase our tension and conflict. Modern human society tolerates sex only between consenting monogamous partners, converting a polyamory abundance of sexual freedom and relaxation into yet another civilizational scarcity. Like all scarcities, that leads to hoarding (leading in turn to sexual jealousy and psychopathic over-protectiveness), covetousness and violence (leading to sexual coercion, abuse, cruel manipulation and even murder), and a black market in the artificially scarce commodity of sex (leading to prostitution and sexual exploitation)."

-- Our Bonobo Forebears Tell Us Why We Want To Have So Much Sex by Dave Pollard; How to save the world; December 19, 2005; blogs.salon.com/0002007/

-- 1,500 animal species practice homosexuality 23-Oct-2006; news-medical.net

-- Sex and booze figured in Egyptian rites Archaeologists find evidence for ancient version of ‘Girls Gone Wild’ By Alan Boyle; Oct 30, 2006; msnbc.msn.com

"...sexual selection provides no advantage to the next generation. To the contrary, having a fit parent of the opposite sex leads to dramatically lower rates of reproductive success."

"...high maternal fitness was good for daughters but not sons, and sons born of high-fitness mothers had substantially fewer offspring than those with low-fitness mothers."

"Thus, females that choose successful mates, the authors explain, won't see indirect benefits through sons, and to make matters worse, will incur the cost of less-fit daughters."

"Simply seeking out the most attractive mate may have surprising implications for the offspring."

-- A little of what you fancy does you no good; 23-Oct-2006; Contact: Natalie Bouaravong press@plos.org 415-568-3445 Public Library of Science

"...seeking out the most attractive mate may be unhealthy for any offspring."

"On average, the lowest quality couple produced the best offspring while the highest quality pair produced the worst offspring."

"People wonder why there is so much gender identity diversity in the human populations – this kind of mechanism may help us get a handle on that."

-- 'Fruit fly dating game' provides clues to our reproductive prowess Sexual selection comes at a cost to offspring; 23-Oct-2006; Contact: Molly Kehoe kehoem@post.queensu.ca 613-533-2877; Nancy Dorrance nancy.dorrance@queensu.ca 613-533-2869; Queen's University

"So if humans evolved from apes, which ones are our closest relatives? Dutch primate researcher Frans de Waal spoke with SPIEGEL about bloodthirsty chimpanzees, sex-crazed bonobos, the origin of the family and the nature of human beings."

-- SPIEGEL Interview: The Two Apes within Us: Hippy Sex Fiends and Brutal Machiavellians; August 24, 2006; spiegel.de

-- Animals Just Want to Have Fun By John Gartner; Aug, 15, 2006; wired.com

-- Modern Humans, Neanderthals May Have Interbred By E.J. Mundell; Oct. 30 2004

"The females consistently preferred the scent of males linked to other females."

-- When mice choose mates, experience counts21-Mar-2006; Contact: Joe Bonner bonnerj@rockefeller.edu 212-327-8998 Rockefeller University

-- Moms' Genetics Might Help Produce Gay Sons By Randy Dotinga; Feb. 21; 2006; medicinenet.com

"Other species engage in behavior that looks an awful lot like the smooch (though without its erotic overtones), which implies that kissing might be just as animalistic an impulse as it sometimes feels....But only humans and our lascivious primate cousins the bonobos engage in full-fledged tongue-on-tongue tonsil-hockey."

"Whatever its origins, kissing seems to be advantageous. A study conducted during the 1980's found that men who kiss their wives before leaving for work live longer, get into fewer car accidents, and have a higher income than married men who don't."

-- The Kiss of Life By JOSHUA FOER; February 14, 2006; nytimes.com

-- Why Girls Sleep Around The evolutionary case for female promiscuity. By William Saletan; Nov. 3, 2006; slate.com

-- Could our big brains come from Neanderthals? Study: Gene could only be passed by interbreeding with humans; Reuters; Nov 7, 2006; msnbc.msn.com

-- Sexiest parents deliver average offspring - sex - 24 October 2006 - New Scientist by Bob Holmes; newscientist.com

-- Studies: Women Genetically Programmed to Cheat Jan. 4, 2006; abcnews.go.com

-- The Bonobo Way Peace Through Pleasure by Susan Block, Ph.D.; blockbonobofoundation.org; available 12-30-06

-- Queen bees are not just being promiscuous, they are boosting the health of the hive, study finds By Susan Lang; Dec. 8, 2006; news.cornell.edu

-- Whales in love: Like humans, their brains are wired for romance By Renee Knight; 10 December 2006; news.independent.co.uk

"The latest anthropological research shows that female infidelity is good for the family, the community, and even the gene pool."

-- The Virtues of Promiscuity By Sally Lehrman, AlterNet. Posted July 22, 2002.

-- Active inbreeding avoidance in wild capuchin monkeys 6-Mar-2006; Contact: Heidi Hardman hhardman@cell.com 617-397-2879 Cell Press

-- Virgin dragon prepares to give birth - Yahoo! News By MARIA CHENG; Dec 21, 2006; news.yahoo.com

"You could say that an adult chimp has more of the characteristics of a person than a new born baby,"

"After all, though humans and chimps are different species, they share up to 99.4% of their most crucial DNA (the figure is difficult to calculate exactly and depends on the scientist you speak to)."

"The scent of male sweat is controlled by their genes, in both chimps and men. In a blind test, three women were asked to sniff the sweat of Danny and Cody the chimp, to see which one they fancied most."

"When they found out afterwards that one of the odours was from a chimp, there was laughter. When they realised that two out of three had preferred the chimp, there was nervous laughter."

-- Chimps 'are people, too' By Dick Taylor; 10 October 2006; news.bbc.co.uk