Stories, News, Books, and Videos on Science, Technology, Computers, Environment and the Realites of Life, for the general, smart public
Posts tagged human mating
ARDI (Ardipithecus ramidus) – The Story of the earliest bipedal hominin ever found
Apr 20th
How and why did our big brains evolve? When did we start using tools and harness fire? When and how did language and complex social interactions start to evolve? All these issues, although still debated, find their answers in the vast amount of theories, models, and computerized simulations that try to fit the material evidence and experimental data as best they can with the above thinking constructs.
The answers to some of these questions go too deep in time. These controversies, we shouldn’t even dare to hope to find a solution to only by scratching the surface of human ancestry’s history. Bold statements need hard evidence. One such issue is the question of: “In what way did the common ancestor of us and the chimpanzees, which genetic studies suggest it wondered the African landscape some 6 million years ago, resembled us or the chimps?”. How did he look like? Did he walk upright or was he knuckle-walking like today’s Gorillas and Chimps? How was the social structure he lived in organized and what were the rules by which this social system conducted itself?
Thousands of fossilized remains gathered until now paint the once mysterious story of how humans came to be. As we mentioned above, lots of theories and models answer the myriad of questions posed by the found fossils and material evidence. Things get more lucid day by day. One such example, which is this article’s tagline, is the the story of the earliest bipedal hominin (the term Hominid was used some 20 years ago – click here for enlightenment) ever found, Ardipithecus ramidus, that frees our mind of the confusion in which our most recent ancestor with the chimpanzee made us unwillingly float in.
The story within this article will show how Ardi (Ardipithecus ramidus) taught us why the below picture may be wrong. The most recent common ancestor with Pan troglodytes (the chimpanzee) may have already walked bipedally, and also, may have already possessed several traits only found in the human ancestry line.
Fig.1 False depicting of human evolution - our common ancestor with the chimpanzee, with a very significant probability, may have not knuckle-walked
More >
Don’t kid yourself girls! Attractive women get it all! Unattractive ones significantly lower their standards.
Mar 22nd
Attractive women… Who doesn’t want them?! In this article we’ll see who get’s them. And no, we won’t leave normal and unattractive women out of the picture… We’ll see what kind of man they can get.
So why not talk about “smart women”, “ambitious women” or “intelligent women”. Well, whether or not it is harder to admit by the ladies, the physical attractiveness of a female is the most important characteristic she possess, and it is the primary tool with which she attracts her short and long-term partners, and the fundamental knob with which she calibrates the expected value of her future male mates.
Furthermore, it important to say the age of the women is a direct representation of her attractiveness. Women below 30 years old are considered very attractive and healthy, whereas older women begin to score lower points in the above characteristics. Natural selection has programmed women’s brains to follow specific algorithms that make them pursue mates with the overall mate value approximately the same as the their personal mate value. A lot of studies gave us hints about the relation between a woman’s attractiveness and a man’s masculinity, physical attractiveness, sex appeal, muscularity, symmetry, physical fitness, intelligence and confrontativeness, all indicators of good male genes.
More >
Why do guys balls hang out like that? Here’s the answer!
Mar 22nd
As ugly as human male genitalia might look like, with its wrinkled scrotum carrying the asymmetrically suspended testicles, and hopefully for the owner of the system, accompanied by a lengthy penis that will attract lots of female sexual partners without any work done, one cannot remain unstartled wondering how such a vulnerable gonadal arrangement could have possibly been able to evolve.
From all possible testicular arrangements, (1) descended but ascrotal, (2) not descended and embedded in the body cavity (like whales have them), the third one, (3) descended and scrotal, is the most widespread, being not a peculiarity observed only in humans, but a prevailing gonadal arrangement among almost all mammals Scientists, therefore, say the scrotum is an older primitive adaptation, and consistent with the observations, that the “loss of descensus is relatively rare”, that is, we will rarely observe species with scrotal testicles that are not descended. But why would such an arrangement evolve? What were the reproductive advantages to such a vulnerable display of potency that even the obviously elevated risks in employing it were outscored by the benefits? To answer this question we need to understand a little about how the male an female reproductive organs prepare and engage in in the copulatory act that leads to fertilization.
More >
Breakthrough in evolutionary psychology! How depresive people sell themselves in the mating arena
Mar 12th
Negative affect? Yes! Whether we are talking about depression, anxiety, low self-esteem or self-worth, we will refer to these sets of negative emotional states as “the Negative Affect”. Why the need to talk about this when discussing mating strategies that had started to evolve eons ago? Well, social scientists and evolutionary psychologists have long established a strong connection between one’s emotional state and the mating strategies that he/she will use to elevate his reproductive fitness.
Wondering about what is a mating strategy? Let’s imagine it as the software that was installed by natural selection in each and every one of us so that we can select, attract, and retain sexual partners that are the best possible pick to produce healthy offspring and to provide them with the safest possible environment to live and develop in. Although men and women adopt significantly different strategies when searching for a long-term partner, the overall value of each mate in a relationship is about the same. We’re practically talking about a business deal, an exchange of different resources, with the condition that the “perceived value” of these investments must be relatively similar for the two partners to remain in the relationship. Why the “perceived value”? Because, when we talk about the mating dance, we do not talk only about sexual intercourse, but about complex emotional states and cognitive behavior switches built into us by natural selection, that regulate the amount of control one mate can have over the other by using sex as a primary trade currency. Thus, we will call the “total mate value” as the “perceived self value” plus the “matting effort” or the amount of investment, that is the amount of time, energy and attention you are willing to bring to table so you can retain your partner in the relationship. This total mate value is the perceived value we were talking about when we said it needs to be the same for the two partners to remain in the relationship.
More >
Are you tall? Then you shouldn’t be so jealous anymore!
Mar 10th
Before we reach the main subject of the article, let me pave the way towards it by reviewing all the scientific knowledge we have about male height and its consequences on mating and relationship satisfaction.
First of all, male height is a direct indicator of good genetic material, health and promising mating opportunities. In general, men that are taller are considered more dominant, physically attractive and of course as having a higher social status than their shorter counterparts. The property of tallness, by its nature, is in direct relation with the level of testosterone the individual male has, and by logical deduction, with the amount of socioeconomic status and resources the prospective male might achieve and gather.
Besides the popular common knowledge, for example from your own or my personal experience, there is sufficient scientific evidence to suggest a definite advantage in reproductive success that taller men enjoy. Taller men are considered more attractive, therefore women are more responsive and open to their courtship strategies. For example taller men receive more responses to ‘lonely hearts’ column advertisements on online dating websites than their shorter male counterparts. Female surveyed in several studies stated they have dated taller men more frequently than shorter males. Also, men that are tall are less likely to date an unattractive female, and less likely to die childless. Tall men are considered superior by the female gender and you can see this all around you. You don’t particularly need a survey to validate this fact of the matter.
More >
Women with a high libido, male providers and young attractive females. What do they have in common?
Mar 8th
Love. More specifically, “falling in love”. Why is that? What is falling in love useful for anyway, besides the enjoyment its quale-o-philic indescribable properties give you? For a long time social scientists categorized romantic love as a western culture specific peculiarity, a signaling of cultural fineness or elegance and taste.
But psychologists, specifically evolutionary psychologists, have long made evident the human species typical adherence that the “falling in love” burst of emotions take part in. Thus, love and more peculiarly romantic love is not a culturally biased induced quirk, but seems to be a human species typical trait and for a good amount of time nobody worthy of any scientific reconnaissance doubted this fact.
So, what is falling in love useful for? There is a considerable amount of evidence suggesting it is a “commitment device”, evolved in our ancestors brains for detecting good partners for stable monogamous relationships, that are a good social medium for rearing healthy human offspring that of course require an unusually long maturation period. “Falling in love” is a commitment device that works in double shifts; both men and women fall in love, but what’s interesting is that both men and women have devices that detect if their mate is also in love with them! How does this commitment device work? Well, the “in love individual” will start making “costly displays” that consume a lot of time, resources and effort that will give a visual hint of how much in love he/she really is. The more costly the displays the more honest the individual must be, therefore the more in love he or she is and therefore the more prone to invest in a long term relationship.
