Our Ancestors Mated with Neanderthals. No comment.

I gotta admit, I would think that this new discovery would throw the theory of facial symmetry being attractive down the well. From archeological recreations of what Neanderthals looked like, they werent that attractive. Yet apparently our forebearers found them tolerable enough to sleep and have children with.

Thats what the de-coding of the Neanderthal genome proved early this month. It seems that 1 to 4% of the human genome in modern humans of non-African ancestry comes from this other species of humans. The fact that the Neanderthal DNA isnt found in Africans suggests that the inter breeding happened between 45,000 and 100,000 years ago. This is the time when non-African ancestors left Africa and began populating the planet.

The previous idea that modern humans simply hunted and competed Neanderthals to extinction was too simple, says Joao Zilhao of the University of Bristol, in Britain. More likely, our human ancestors mated with the primitve humans, which have since become extinct.

It seems that Asiatic people can also trace their DNA back to primitive humans. Human bones found in a cave near Beijing, China, have features typical of other Homo sapien species. Human artifacts have been found in Neanderthal dwellings.

I'm no biologist, but I know that when you cross a horse with a donkey, you get a mule, which are sterile and cant reproduce. Besides size, I think that a donkey and horse look pretty similar, but they are different enough that their offpring are uncapable of having mules. It seems that there are fewer differences between humans and Neanderthals than I would have thought. If their offspring had been sterile, we wouldnt be here.

Source:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20627603.600-neanderthals-not-the-only-apes-humans-bred-with.html?DCMP=NLC-nletter&nsref=mg20627603.600

Rape

Okay, this topic doesn't get a cute musically themed title. Like the cheating post, this is a darker subject. Lets get to it.

So we've established that the race to pass on our genes isn't nice and is very selective. That means few winners and even more losers. Have you noticed that attractive people have attractive partners? When Brad Pitt left Jennifer Aniston, he hooked up with Angelina Jolie, not Susan Boyle. (Then again, Jude Law left Sienna Miller for their nanny, so some men are just whores.) Then there is Danny DeVito and Rhea Perlman. Nice people but not models. Then there is Lyall Lovett. Is he seeing anyone?

Sometimes, people don't find that special someone. I'm not saying that Lyall Lovett is a rapist (he's a singer and rich and famous, so he can get women) but many men get left out in the cold. Rapists tend not to be the most attractive or popular men. If they ever want to have sex, they have to force it. Its like in that SUBLIME song: "If it wasn't for date rape, I'd never get laid."

Back to the animals, especially the scorpion flies. Male scorpion flies have many ways of attracting females. They prove themselves by finding dead insects to give to her, or steal dead bugs from spiders webs or use their drool to make fake insects to trick the female.

Lets say a male cant do any of those things and the females are ignoring him. They resort to rape. The male will wait until a female passes by, grab her with his abdomen and hold her down while he mates with her. The female violently fights back the whole time. Most of the time the female escapes before the male successfully rapes her and when he does mate with her, she always lays fewer eggs. Its unknown if the female somehow makes it so she lays fewer eggs or if the male just produces less sperm and fertilizes fewer eggs.

Rape is obviously a violent, terrible act against women. Its humiliating and unforgivable. But that is nature. Nature doesn't care if you are humiliated. Feminists rightfully denounce rape and call for all sorts of laws and ways to protect women. Where they differ from evolutionary theory is that feminists say that rape is purely about men dominating women through violence and fear. They correctly say that rapists target the vulnerable and defenseless. While its not politically correct to say this, women are smaller and weaker than men and sometimes its good to have male protection.

Women aged 20 to 24 are most likely to be raped. Eighty percent of rape victims are under age 30, according to the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network (RAINN). These women are young and many are likely unmarried. They are also in the most fertile time in their lives. Women often out live their husbands, leaving many elderly women defenseless. Yet older women are much less likely to be raped than younger women. It would seem that fertility may have an influence on whom rapists choose to target. (On the other hand, 15% of rape victims are younger than age 12, and are just as unable to reproduce as women over 60.)

In the years 2004 and 2005, 64,080 women were raped in the United States. From those rapes, over 3,000 pregnancies resulted. The odds of getting pregnant after one act of unprotected sex is 5%, and given the possibility that some victims were likely on the Pill or were infertile or were not raped vaginally, the number could have been much higher.

There is a important point to be made there. While women who are sexually assaulted are often young, they are not always raped in such a way to cause pregnancy. This is a blow to the "rape is a means to pregnancy" theory espoused by evolutionary biologists and is more proof for feminists who say rape is a means of humiliating women. This shows how difficult it is to study biology's effect on human behavior. We are not purely driven by biology as animals are.

Sources:
Watson, Lyall. Dark Nature: A Natural History of Evil. Harper Collins, 1995.
http://www.endabuse.org/content/action_center/detail/754
http://www.rainn.org/get-information/statistics/sexual-assault-victims

Abortion

Like the rape article, this subject is too serious to have a cute rock and roll inspired title. Let's just get to it. All numbers are based on fact and no judging of those that have had abortions is intended. I'm not here to pass judgement or criticize. You can go to a multitude of websites for that. I'm really just adding my two cents through the window of evolutionary biology.


Ok, so we've well established that our bodies are trying to create new life, whether we want them to or not. If evoultionary biology is right, than many young women should have unintended pregnancies.

According to a 2003 Fox News report, there are around 6 million new pregnancies in the US every year. Half of them are unintended and 1.6 million of them are aborted. In many of those cases, the partners didnt use contraception or the method failed. (While this is not a scientific survey, the May 2010 Esquire also had a survey of women. It found that 57% of women always use protection, 7% never do and 36% sometimes do.)Of women that choose to have abortions, 80% are unmarried and 53% are younger than age twenty four, as of the year 1995. At some point in their lives, 46% of women will have an abortion.

The Center for Disease Control's 2009 report on abortion was much the same as the 2003 numbers supplied by Fox News. In addition to the Fox numbers, it added that in 2002, 98% of women that had ever had sex had used at least one form of birth control. It also said that as of that time, 2009, 7.4% of women were not using any form of protection. Consider the finding that said the odds of getting pregnant from just one act of unprotected sex were better than first thought, and you see a lot of unintended pregnancies. The fact that half of all pregnancies between 2003 and 2009 were accidental proves that out.

The reasons given for the abortions were all pretty steady over the years. Consistently, 93% of pregnancies were ended because it was inconvenient for the mother. Four percent were because of the mother's health. Two and a half percent because of the health of the embryo. One half of a percent of abortions were performed because of rape or incest.

Look at the numbers and think of the scientific findings in the previous posts. The 2007 Polish study that said attractive young women were easier to get pregnant and tended to get pregnant earlier. The hormonal studies that said women want to have sex the most when they are most likely to get pregnant.

I know that the following ideas would never happen, but I do wonder a few things. I think it would be interesting to determine the symmetry of women that have had abortions and the symmetry of the men that got them pregnant. If evolutionary theory is correct, than those that have had abortions should be more attractive than those that have not. Also, genetic testing could be done on the aborted fetuses, to see if they are genetically healthier than the rest of the population. As I said, this would never happen, as its a huge violation of a woman's privacy.

Center for Disease Control site:
http://www.cdc.gov/reproductivehealth/unintendedpregnancy/contraception.htm

Fox News:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,880,00.html

Fuck and Kiss You Both at the Same Time: Cheating

Okay, now to one of the darker aspects of sexuality: cheating. We all know of someone that has cheated on a spouse or loved one, or we may be the cheater or cheated. Naturally, one of the first questions asked is "Why?" Affairs tear families apart and can permanently destroy a person's sense of trust. So why would a person do it? As said before, Mother Nature is a bitch and she made us in her own selfish image.

There are psychological reasons that people cheat. Women may feel lonely if their husband is inattentive. It may seem strange that a woman would feel alone if her husband is nearby, but being emotionally available is important. Women have other reasons: boredom in a stale relationship, revenge if she feels wronged and low self esteem if she thinks her husband doesnt want her.

Men's reasons are often more physical but many times are similar to women's reasons. As said, there are the physical reasons, like he just isnt getting enough sex at home. He may want to know if he is still attractive to other women and if he's "still got it." His wife may have lost her attractiveness or fun personality. Younger women may have that spark that his wife has lost. Other times they want revenge or some excitement. Many are just arrogant and feel they deserve to cheat.

Former Presidential candidate John Edwards is an example of several of these reasons. His wife was older, dying of cancer and past child bearing, so he found a younger woman that was able to carry his child. None of this was conscious, of course. The mind is not always aware of what the body wants. Edwards rationalized his affair by explaining that he grew up poor and rose to greatness with his talents. He felt invincible, special and entitled. Thats no excuse, but its what he went with.

But this is a biology and evolution blog. The biological theories behind extramarital affairs (or "extra pair copulations" in the technical term) are controversial and cause a lot of bitching and moaning from both men's and women's sides. Again, its all about getting pregnant. Women can find "sperm donars" anywhere and everywhere. Usually, they get offers when they dont want any.

Thats the problem. How does a woman choose between two possible fathers for their children? They get sperm from both of them. The sperm that fertilizes her egg tends to come from "the better man." A rich man may have money, but not be attentive and caring, always focused on his job. Another man may be more warm and caring but less wealthy. In fact, many times its the sperm of the lover that ends up impregnanting the woman. One study suggests that 10% of children of married couples come from another man. Female orgasm may help the sperm of another man reach her egg before that of her husbands.

A camera was placed onto the penis of a man as he had sex with a woman. At orgasm, the camera filmed the woman's cervix dipping into the seminal pool, possibly helping the sperm into the uterus faster. This is not as definite a finding as you might expect. It was only filmed once, in one couple. It would have to be filmed many times in many other couples to be sure.

Men have ways of getting around this strategy. Of the hundreds of millions of sperm that they ejaculate (sometimes up to 600 million), only 1% are meant to fertilize an egg, according to Robin Baker. While the "fertilizer sperm" swim towards the egg, the "blocker sperm" stay in the cervix and keep the sperm of other men from entering the uterus. These are the sperm that were previously thought to be merely deformed and useless. Baker suggests that the "sperm wars" can tilt the odds in favor of a woman's lover by 9:1 if she sleeps with her lover before her husband.

Baker, Robin. Sperm Wars: The Science of Sex. Great Britain: HarperCollins, 1996.
http://www.yourtango.com/20086333/narcissism-made-me-do-it.html
http://ezinearticles.com/?Why-Do-Women-Cheat-On-Partners?&id=239761
http://www.cheatingways.com/why-do-we-cheat/top-10-reasons-why-men-cheat/

Let's Get it On: What Happens During Sex

Oh my fucking God, it's finally happening! You managed to get that sexy someone into your bedroom and they want to sleep with you. As you strip the clothing off of each other, there is a lot going on in both bodies. Not that you are thinking about that at that point in time, nor should you. But here I go again, taking all the mystery and romance out of sex with...science.

Kissing is often a big part of having sex. But why? There are lots of times that people kiss that have nothing to do with sex, yet a kiss and making love are permenently linked. For one thing, its stimulates the body. Nerves in the lips are one hundred times more sensitive than the ends of our fingers. Not even our genitals have as many nerves as the human lips. Some women even report having orgasms from being kissed. There is some evidence that testosterone from a man's kiss enters a woman's mouth via the saliva, making her more willing to have sex.


Then we get to the blow jobs and carpet licking. Robin Baker, author of the controversial book, Sperm Wars, claims that oral sex is a way of testing a lover. The scent of bodily fluids stays on a person's genitals for several hours after making love. By smelling and licking down there, a man or woman can tell if their lover has been unfaithful. It may also test a partner for sexually transmitted diseases. Baker claims that women can tell if a partner has a disease by tasting his penis. Spots and rashes are signs of infection, as is an unpleasant taste. A yellow look to the semen is a bad sign and so is blood. A healthy man should have a waxy taste.

A man can smell the semen in a woman's vagina if she has slept with another man. Oral sex is well known for bringing a woman to orgasm, even if it does take time. (Another old joke. What's the difference between a golf ball and a clitoris? A man will spend hours looking for a golf ball.) The fact that it takes time may be a clue to cunnilingus's purpose. It takes patience. A patient lover may be a better lover.

As for the sex itself,a lot can be said. Positions can help with getting pregnant, like missionary. But cowgirl can still get a woman pregnant, because the vaginal lips come closely together after the penis is withdrawn. (The vagina is more of a slit than a tunnel.) The semen will be near the cervix either way. Even after sex, the seminal pool will slide into a position near the cervix now matter how a woman moves.

There is a reason why people have sex the way they do, with the penis going in and out. The movement makes the penis remove any material (semen from another man, or leftover infertile mucus, which can block sperm's movement to the cervix) like a suction piston. Thrusting doesnt just feel good, it cleans a woman's vagina out. The longer a man can last before he has an orgasm, the more he will clean out the vagina and get rid of obstacles for his sperm. The bigger the penis, the better it removes material.

For women's part, their vagina's can shrink or expand, depending on the size of the man's penis. The average length of a vagina is four inches, and most men are five inches long. If the man is bigger than five inches, he needs to enter her slowly and do a lot of foreplay beforehand to comfort her. If he does this, her vagina can get bigger by 150% to 200%. Few men have penises smaller than four inches.

Its not clear exactly what happens at orgasm. Men will ejaculate sperm at about 28 mph, according to Playboy magazine. Every man will make different amounts of sperm and it depends on how long its been between orgasms. An average man will pump out 450million sperm at one time and 350 million forty eight hours later. Other research says that a woman can determine which man she is sleeping with will be the father of her baby. If she has an orgasm a minute before or forty five minutes after her man ejaculates, she may keep 90% of the sperm in her cervix. With no orgasm she will keep around 50% of the sperm. According to a letter (published in the British Medical Journal) between a woman and her doctor in the 1960's, the woman's orgasm with her lover pulled his condom off of him. When the doctor tried to get it out, it was found in her cervix.

Romantic feelings didn't increase the odds of female orgasm and neither did sexual experience of either partner. Women had the most orgasms with the most symmetrical men during sex. In the journal Animal Behavior, biologists Thornhill and his colleagues found that women with the most attractive (symmetric) men had orgasms 75% of the time. Women with the most unsymmetrical men had orgasms 30% of the time. The average was 60%. The women did not have more orgasms during foreplay. Its thought that women can stay with a wealthy man but secretly have children with a better looking man.


Baker, Robin. Sperm Wars: The Science of Sex. Great Britain: HarperCollins, 1996.

Other facts come from these websites:
http://hss.fullerton.edu/sociology/orleans/symattrct.txt
http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/199601/the-orgasm-wars
http://www.netdoctor.co.uk/sex_relationships/facts/penissize.htm
http://facts.randomhistory.com/2009/01/22_kissing.html

Flirting: Do You Think I'm Sexy?

Okay, so you've got you're eye on the studly football quarterback or the women with the mesmerising cleavage. You are attracted to them, but that doesn't mean anything unless they are attracted to you. You have to get them attracted to you. This is the tricky part: the mating dance.

Women send out five times as many flirting signals as men do (Which totally took me by surprise. I never know what the hell women are thinking.) They like to touch themselves and you. No, not like that but they do want you to look at the places they are touching. (No wonder I couldnt stop thinking about a former co-workers chest after she gently caressed between her breasts as we were talking. Dammit.) That means look, not ogle. If she is sitting across from you, and slowly crosses and uncrosses her legs while gently rubbing her thigh, thats a sign. If she touches her own arm, thats a good sign. If she touches your arm, thats even better.

Besides touching, she will lick her lips and look you in the eye. Eye contact wont be brief, it will last just long enough to make you feel slightly uncomfortable. The way they dress is a form of flirting. A women in a baggy sweat shirt and sweat pants does not want to be bothered by a man. A woman that is showing a little bit of skin on her shoulder, chest or legs is more interested. One of my personal favorites is when they sway their hips as they walk. Its sexy and kind of naughty. It says, "Look at me. Down here."

Men apparantly do a lot of the same things. I know personally, I tend to stand up taller and suck in my gut when an attractive woman is around. We all know that we have to look good to impress a woman. We'll suddenly brush lint off our shoulder, run our hands over our neck, check our tie and our hair. Looking is important to us. I'm sure women know that. What they might not know is that when we look at an attractive lady, our pupils can get four times bigger than normal. Dialated pupils let in more sunlight to our eyes, letting us see better.

Women seem to think that shyness is cute but not sexy. Thats why we try to act like big shots. Alpha males. We act more assertive and talk louder. Who do you think gets laid more? James Bond, or Melvin the librarian? Like the woman that sways her hips, men loop their thumbs into the belt loops of their pants. It makes women look downward.

Sources:
http://www.effective-communicating.com/how-women-flirt.html
http://www.effective-communicating.com/how-men-flirt.html

What is Physically Attractive: I Like Big Butts

Ok, now we are getting to the stuff that people actually care about. No more hormones or horseshoe crabs having sex. This post will be about men's and women's bodies and what exactly is attractive to the opposite sex.

Women's preference for tall men is no secret. Males that are over five foot eleven are the most popular, and get the most responses from personal ads. Heavier men also tend to be more attractive to women, according to John Manning and his colleagues at the University of Liverpool. "Perhaps symmetry is so difficult to assess you need something else, like body weight, to detect it," says Robin Baker, a biologist at the University of Manchester. (Baker is also the author of Sperm Wars.) Square jaws are also popular with women.

All of these features, height, weight and a long jaw bone, are influenced by testosterone. Men with the highest testosterone counts also tend to produce the most sperm. Only the healthiest males can afford to have so much testosterone. The hormone tends to weaken the immune system (which is why men that take steroids tend to have acne, as well as boys that are going through puberty). Men that go through life with relatively few acne outbreaks have stronger immune systems, despite the surge in testosterone. Only the strongest immune system could still prevent acne.

While men are dominated by testosterone, women are strongly influenced by estrogen. Estrogen is commonly found in fatty tissue. Overweight men have higher than normal estrogen, which decreases their sex drive, sperm count and overall happiness. It has a similar effect on women. It enlarges their hips and breasts. Many men's preference for large boobs is well known. The "why" is the mystery. (As a guy that likes breasts, its hard to explain. Its not that smaller breasted women are unattractive or unfeminine, its that the larger endowed women are extra feminine.)

A study of Polish women in 2007 found that women with large boobies and slim waists are the most fertile, as found by measuring their estroidal and progesterone. They also tend to be healthier, are easier to get pregnant and do so at younger ages. By choosing voluptuous women to have sex with, men are bettering thier chances of passing on their genes. On the same note, women battling anorexia often have trouble getting pregnant and carrying the pregnancy to term. One in five women in fertility clinics are effected by an eating disorder.

Like Anna Nicole Smith said before being named Playmate of the Year in 1993, "Who wants to hug a skeleton?"

Some of this information was taken from Psychology Today (Ten Politically Incorrect Truths About Human Nature, written by Allan S. Miller) and from http://hss.fullerton.edu/sociology/orleans, symattrct.txt. at California State University. More info came from
http://www.fertilityfactor.com/infertility_female_infertility_eating_disorders.html

What Animal Studies Have Shown: I Want to Fuck You Like an Animal

Odd as it sounds, if animals have similar sex behaviors as people do, it strengthens a researcher's findings about human sexuality. Do animals prefer symmetrical mates? Do animals have more sex around the time that the female is fertile?

In many ways, animals act a lot like people do, even the one's that aren't even closely related to us. No one is going to say that a horseshoe crab looks at all human, but female crabs routinely end up mating with stronger, more energetic males. Younger males tend to end up with the females, and they are clearly younger, because of their shiny, slimy surface. Older males lose their shine, and tend to grow barnacles on their bodies. Even female scorpion flies prefer males with even sized wings. Having one wing smaller than the other might be a genetic defect, something that the female wouldn't want to pass on to her offspring.

Just as human women prefer to sleep with symmetrical men when they are fertile, so race horses tend to be healthier than asymmetrical horses. A British study in 1994 found that symmetrical horses tend to be faster than asymmetrical animals. Similar can be said for Japanese scorpion flies. Those with symmetrical wings tend to be healthier and live longer.

Female chimpanzees behave more more like human women than the horseshoe crabs (no surprise there). For the chimpanzees, affection, or "romance" if you like, is important. Primatologist Ron Nadler conducted an experiment that gave female chimps more control over if they had sex or not. Male chimps, who are bigger and meaner, tended to decide if sex happened. He separated the chimps into male and female pairs, all of whom already knew each other. The chimps were put into connecting cages with a door between the male and female cages. The door could only be opened by the females, some of whom were put on the Pill.

As said before, the Pill lowers sex drive in women, and it does the same in chimpanzees. As long as the females were on the Pill, they didn't bother opening the door for the males. At least, for some of them. Those that had good relationships with the males opened the door and let sex happen, whether they were on the Pill or not. The same was true of the females in what could be called "abusive relationships." They opened the door for the aggressive males as well, regardless of contraception. Others didn't bother opening the door at all, as long as they were on the birth control. As soon as they were taken off, they began having sex again once ovulation started. Similar results were found in orangutans.

Of course, people aren't animals and we have sex for many reasons besides having children. Sex is a social activity, and much of it is determined by societal circumstances and pressures. This does make the study of sex more difficult but doesn't take away from what biology was taught us.

Blum, Deborah. Sex on the Brain. New York: Penguin Group, 1998.
Watson, Lyall. Dark Nature. New York: HarperCollins, 1995.

Hormones: What I Got You Got to Get It Put it in You

Women wonder "Why the hell are men always so horny?" Men wonder "When the fuck am I finally going to get laid?" We drive each other crazy, don't we? Shannon Elizabeth once said in the January 2000 edition of Maxim magazine that sex is like sugar. The more of it you have, the more you want. She went on to say that she thinks men always have sugar in their system. The "problem" is with men's and women's hormones.

Both sexes have testosterone, but men have ten times as much as women. Testosterone is essential for sex to happen. It makes men aggressive, physically and sexually. Both men and women with the largest amounts of testosterone in their system tend to commit more violent crimes and be more unmanageable in prison. As said before, women also have testosterone but it varies in amount through out the menstrual cycle. Its most common at a specific time: a few days before they ovulate.

Men's testosterone can increase just by being attracted to a woman. It can happen at any time, day or night. So that's why we men are "always ready." We need to be ready for action in case a woman happens to be in the mood. Most of the time, this means we are frustrated by women's seeming lack of interest and women just want us to leave them alone. (It reminds me of an old SNL sketch, where a woman invents a device to cut off her husband's sex drive. She called it "Balls Off" and was a stun gun, applied to his balls.)

Women also have a hormone called estradiol. As a woman's estradiol level increases, so does their desire for sex. It also is most common during ovulation. Researchers found that estradiol, mixed with oxytocin (a hormone released when a person in touched) makes a woman want to have her lover penetrate her. Massages have long been known to be a turn on, and oxytocin is the reason.

Again, all of these hormones are working to the same goal: getting the woman pregnant. Testosterone keeps men constantly willing to have sex. It also makes women want sex, but only when they are fertile. A report in the journal "Human Reproduction" found that sex became more frequent in women's six most fertile days, despite the fact that the women in the study had been either sterilized or were using intrauterine devices. The study suggested that sex doesn't happen at random.

Ironically, oral contraceptives have become part of the experiment. The pill works by blocking androgens (a kind of testosterone), which make a woman horny. In 1978, a study found that women that were on hormonal birth control were less interested and less likely to suggest having sex. Those that were using non-hormonal birth control were more sexually active during ovulation.

This is a simplified way of looking at human sexuality. The above science is just that, science. It doesn't take into account birthdays, alcohol, parties or boredom. All of these things happen outside of a person's hormones.

http://www.altpenis.com/penis_news/20040513222904data_trunc_sys.shtml
Blum, Deborah. Sex on the Brain. New York: Penguin Group, 1998.
Some also comes from www.eioba.com.

Why Have Sex at All: (Not) Down With the Sickness

Why should we have sex at all? Many creatures reproduce without sex. Sure, that makes things pretty boring, but that's not nature's problem. Mother Nature is a bitch and all she cares about is herself. Our genes are part of nature and they are just as selfish. They want to exist and to exist for as long as possible. As far as nature is concerned, one of the largest threats to the survival of genes is disease.

The bitch has a point. All through history, diseases and plagues have wiped out millions of people. The Black Death killed over one third of the people in Europe in the thirteen century. Over ninety percent of the Central American Indians died of smallpox after the Spanish brought the disease to Mexico from Europe. More people died of Spanish flu in 1918-19 than in the previous four years of the First World War.

How does a species protect itself from being wiped out by a really nasty bug? By changing up immune systems. Viruses and bacteria are always mutating and evolving, so our immune systems need to keep changing to stay ahead of them. One person's immune system being mixed with another person's immune system keeps sickness guessing. If all immune systems were the same, it would be easy for a disease to kill us all, because we'd have the same weaknesses.

So how do we know whose immune systems we should combine with our own to create stronger children? Smell. A guy with a different kind of immunity system from a woman's will smell sexier to her than a guy with a similar kind. TV's Christina Hendricks may not read much of evolutionary theory (Maybe she does, who knows? If so, hi Christina. Damn, you're radiant.) but she touched on it in the May 2010 Special Edition "Women" issue of Esquire magazine.

She said, "Speaking of your body, you don't understand the power of your own smell. Any woman who is currently with a man is with him partly because she loves the way he smells. And if we haven't smelled you for a day or two and then we suddenly are within inches of you, we swoon. We get light-headed. It's intoxicating. It's heady."

Read more: http://www.esquire.com/women/women-issue/christina-hendricks-sexy-0510#img#ixzz0nYq2phse

Smart woman. Her opinion was confirmed in a famous study involving sweaty t-shirts. Men were asked to sleep in a brand new t-shirt for two nights. After the shirts were turned over to scientists, the shirts were given to women to smell. The shirts worn by the most symmetrical men (meaning facial attractiveness, based on tiny measurements of the face) were considered the best smelling by the women. The women's sense of smell varied over the course of her menstrual cycle, and it was strongest while they were ovulating. So women are on the look out for healthy, good looking men when they are most likely to get pregnant.

But men are attracted to a woman's smell as well, although on a more subconscious level. In a October 2007 issue of Evolution and Human Behavior, it was found that strippers that were ovulating made on average seventy dollars in tips. Those that were on their periods made thirty five dollars in tips and those that were in between made fifty dollars from customers. Men also tended to be more affectionate and more jealous when their wives were ovulating.

So guys, stay clean but don't go over board on the cologne and deodorant. The women will be more attracted to you. In theory. If you get laid, thank me. If you get told you're gross, blame science.

About This Blog Site

I'll be totally up front with you: I'm a virgin. Yes, by choice. I've never even kissed a woman but the sex drive is certainly there. While I dont know anything about the subject first hand, its still a fascinating subject.

Have you ever heard someone say, "Whats the big deal? Its just sex!" I never understood that. If its "Just sex," whats the rush to have it? Why do people love to talk about it? Whats the deal with how our society obsesses over our sex lives and the sex lives of other people? No no. There is nothing "just" about sex. Its one of the most powerful things that humanity deals with.

I have religious beliefs and I'm proud of them. I also am fascinated by biology and the theory of evolution. This blog will deal with the latter and ignore the former. If sexual selection and evolutionary theory are correct, than every act of sexual intercourse between fertile heterosexual couples has the potential to effect the course of human evolution. And you thought it was just a fun way to spend a night with a babe or stud.