evolutionary question

kwerk

kwerk

kwerk

Wise Guy
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ok I promise I wont post any more threads for a while but this is a legit thing I was wondering about.

Why aren't men sexually attracted to ALL fertile women? If the goal is to simply pass on your genes, there is no downside to procreating with as many women as possible; fat ones, ugly ones, old ones. Once they are fertilized it becomes their problem. The only downside is the zinc and protein and whatever else needed to produce a "load". Hardly a dietary burden.

I can understand women needing to be highly selective of mates because they have to use massive resources to make the baby, then risk their life giving birth. But I don't see any evolutionary reason for men to have any sort of discriminating taste in mates at all?
 
Because humans are vastly variable in looks and we have the ability to have equally variable taste.

All female hippos look the same, but not all human females look like hippos.
 
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There is a selection pressures towards perceived attractiveness which is an indicator of genetic health and a successful healthy life. Not really any different to the animal kingdom, e.g. Birds look for mates with the best plumage.


There are also studies with strong evidence that shows that women with wider hips are statistically more likely to have easier births and are perceived more attractive by males. Similar with breasts, someone with highly asymmetric breasts may be less optimal in milk production, e.g. 1 breast may be malformed, hence there is selection to pressure to avoid such mates.
 
Last time I checked, weren't those choices made by our subconscious?
Of course, our subconscious is under fire by the media, bombarding us with 'ideals'.
Living in a media saturated country will put further pressure on people to follow these trends.

Killing off the 'ugly' people by lack of breeding is a slow process, but i expect there are more attractive on average than a few hundred years ago.
Women have to be picky due to the resources and the risks they have to endure.
Eventually, it's possible that people may realise that they don't have to follow what the media define as attractive, but that's unlikely to be honest.
Reasons for men not to pick fat, ugly women could include, poor health in the baby due to obesity or the possibility of an ugly child (the subconscious at work?)
Kinesthesia, or rather, the lack of, has a small role in attractiveness. If we find someone attractive we tend to mimick body language subconciously, so if someone copies you, you may find them more attractive.


I'll stop there, I think the vodkas making me senseless, or at least, more so than usual. ;)
 
Freakbro said:
There's the flaw in the argument, men are aren't they? :p
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This is probably closest. Yes, evolutionary pressure pushes you towards an attempt to mate with the "best" female you can find. But not everyone gets the good-looking ones, and it has been known for a long time that in general people end up with a partner roughly as good-looking as they are (assuming no extra factors like fame or money). If you are really ugly then really ugly is all you are left with, because the better-looking ones can find someone better. You may indeed want the beauties, but they are out of reach (legally at least). But the latest theories suggest that love is chemical reaction designed to blind you to the fact that you married a troll.
 
It's a balanced evolutionary scenario.

The starting point is that males increase their reproductive success by mating as many times as possible with as many females as possible. This is true for most animals and it is true of humans.

From that point, there has been the evolution of monogamy - a female can secure the best chances for her offspring by securing a male to provide for her children. This stunts the impact of the starting point as females being more selective means that males are in turn judged more by their behaviour. Mating with a beta-female is a social display that you are a beta-male and will ultimately reduce your chances of mating with a female with A-grade genes. Of course, beta-males will happily mate with beta-females and the same for omega. It creates (excuse how crudely this is put) a league system whereby those in the premiership can afford to snip those in division 2.

Of course, if we can get away with it, we will sleep with almost anyone for the 'starting point' reason.

I hope that helps!
 
Looks have a lot to do with genes. There was a paper not to long ago that said that generally the females with the most 'average' faces (in terms of proportions, feature placement etc.) were considered the most attractive, because those with more abnormalities are more likely to have less favourable genes. With people who are, say, fat it could be an indication that they have genes that might be more susceptible to addiction.

The main other thing that comes into it is that you don't want genes identical to your own. This might have more to do with pheromones, but you will be more attracted to people the more different their genetic code is. This helps any potential offspring by giving them the widest range of immunities and other benefits possible, wheras if say you both had exactly the same set of immunities then your child would be at a disadvantage.

That said, i don't know about you but as long as they're physically fit there aren't many people that i would actually consider to be 'unattractive'.
 
Are there any other animals that are selective with who they mate with?

On a slightly different note... I sometimes wonder if we are affecting our own natural course of evolution by creating things to suit our needs.

For example... will we in time developed thicker skin which is perhaps even armour like? Or will our ability to create protective clothing prevent it because that box has already been ticked, if you like.
 
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EdGey said:
On a slightly different note... I sometimes wonder if we are affecting our own natural course of evolution by creating things to suit our needs.

For example... will we in time developed thicker skin which is perhaps even armour like? Or will our ability to create protective clothing prevent it because that box has already been ticked, if you like.
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Taking your example. Due to the slow speed at which evolution occurs, by the time humans manage to evolve skin could act as 'amour', along with the other changes that would have to happen to the human body to support this, our technology would have let us develop weapons that render this 'amour' useless.

But that is not to say that we are still not evolving. It is just happening to us in other ways such as in what food groups we can eat.
 
I didn't really mean armour in the sense of stopping a bullet... but more against general common injuries and harsh weather conditions, like many other species.

In a way I suppose we're controlling our own evolution by what we invent and create? :cool:
 
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EdGey said:
I didn't really mean armour in the sense of stopping a bullet... but more against general common injuries and harsh weather conditions, like many other species.

In a way I suppose we're controlling our own evolution by what we invent and create? :cool:
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Thicker skin requires more energy to create. Think of it like bodybuilding - your body isn't going to just grow more muscle unless you give it a reason to, and it can't unless you give it the materials to. Everything is a trade off, and clearly a self repairing epidermis is a better deal than thick skin armour, especially when you consider that the only job of your skin isn't to protect you, it's to regulate heat.
 
That's exactly my point though... are we removing the 'reason to' by inventing other things to take it's place? Our body has no need for thicker skin because we have good clothing.

Thick skin is a random example, it could apply to anything really. Night vision... we have night vision goggles and we are safe in our homes at night, thus there is far less need for humans to develop better night vision.

I realise my understanding of how evolution actually works is likely severely warped :D
 
EdGey said:
In a way I suppose we're controlling our own evolution by what we invent and create? :cool:
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I think control is the wrong word. The processes that cause the mutations that can lead to evolution are random in their nature, and are still occurring even in modern humans. However, most of them are not really beneficial to modern humans, as our technology has evolved to the point where it sort of mutes the evolution.

For example, there is no real advantage to having thicker body hair to help an individual keep warm when the whole of the population has access to, or can make, clothing that does a better job.
 
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