http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2165491/So-men-arent-hard-wired-unfaithful-Study-claimed-men-promiscuous-nature-flawed.html
PUBLISHED: 10:06 EST, 27 June 2012 | UPDATED: 10:21 EST, 27 June 2012
A new study has shaken the foundations of sexual selection theory as it has been understood since 1948.
New research at UCLA examined the famous fruit fly study conducted by English geneticist Angus John Bateman.
The findings undermine the long-accepted theory that men are hard-wired to be unfaithful while women seek monogamy.
Lies, damned lies, and statistics!
Despite the title seeming to claim men are NOT promiscuous by nature, the body text merely says that women are just as bad.
Main point of course being that if a flawed study seems to "prove" what we expect, it is less rigorously checked... for decades!!
Humans are sexual beings…the entire species is driven by sex…
Nothing new here.
Not just humans!
More proof we’re not that special after all…
There goes my favourite excuse.
I’m sure it’s a rich and long list…
It’s either too long or not long enough, I’m not sure.
I’m told the girth is actually more important MM
She was just being polite.
I’m astonished that the paper was ever taken seriously in the first place. Fruit Flies are useful to study for many things but who’s to say their sexual behaviour is any indication of ours? We’re much closer to birds than flies and many birds mate for life so you could simply study them and draw the complete opposite conclusion!
All the same I’d still imagine men to be generally more promiscuous than women because it actually makes sense for us to be. The only way a women can get her genes into the next generation is for her to fall pregnant, survive the pregnancy, survive the birth, and then raise the child for many years to adulthood. This presents a massive challenge that requires support from others. Consequently finding a mate who will help with that task is in her best interest. Whereas a bloke can (technically) get many, many women pregnant and just through sheer probability some of them will have a good chance of making it even if he isn’t around. So a women’s best option is to find a reliable mate who’ll stick around and help her raise the kid while a bloke’s is to stick around and help raise a kid while at the same time spreading his genes as far and wide as possible as a insurance policy. That’s the way I’ve always seen it anyway, although I could be wrong (BTW I’m of course not justifying or condoning this behaviour and certainly don’t partake in it! I’m just looking at it from a strictly evolutionary point of view. From an evolutionary point of view it would also make sense to kill your rivals but that doesn’t make it right or acceptable either).
Bzzz
I stand corrected!
I actually subscribe to much of what you say. Our mega-brains have lead to “society” and behaviours that have changed way more quickly than those caused by mere evolutionary pressures on our bodies. We’re basically fixing the game. Cheating, if you like.
Evolution built us to require a stable parent caring environment (both parents – one nurturing, one providing) until the kid was able to fend for itself out on the African plains. ~13 years.
Once you have “society” though, a single parent can bring up a child reasonably well alone, due to that broader available support. This frees the male to “fuck and run” as Liz Phair would sing. Safe in the knowledge that the offspring is still likely to prosper, and his genes will spread.
My 2c…