What if our prehistoric male ancestors had ignored the instinct to choose mates based on factors of health, symmetry or physical “beauty?” What if they had consistently picked the most sexually active mates and then didn’t let the possibility of being a cuckold bother them?
Let’s assume that the human race survives to present day. Would women approach men in the sexual drive department?
The real semi-scientific question: can a high sex drive ever evolve in female humans, or are they limited by their biologies? Any other species blessed with horny females and males begging for a break?
Presumably there’s an evolutionary advantage to not having high-sex-drive females, or they’d be like that today
IIRC, one theory is that it is advantageous to male genes for the male to impregnate virtually every female he can, since the cost is very low. On the other hand, it’s better for a female (better for her genes’ propogation, that is) to be very selective about breeding partners, since it’s such a big effort and risk for her to bear and raise a child, and she can only do it a limited number of times.
forget the human aspect for awhile. look at the animal kingdom. most species are very selective to find the mate with the highest probability of perpetuation of the species. thats evolution. a species that had females similar to the XXX movies would not survive.
Are there any other species where the female allows sex to occur on a regular basis even though she is not in “heat.” I can’t think of any. Women (and men) ARE nymphos.
Well thats the question. did the cavemen choose woman based on beauty or the physical ability to go out and wrestle a moose. If i was cold and hungry and had a choice of a slight woman vs a big bruiser that had food/skins. I might fool around with the slight one but I would settle down with the butch one. and the same for the women. the tom cruise types would be used for bait.
I dont think the bias toward smaller shapely women came till the middle ages/town dwelling time.
They did, by definition. It’s just two ways of stating the same thing. The women “most sexually active” were picked the most.
The question of how this trait would evolve seems to me to hinge on two subtleties of the situation.
Were the women who were “most sexually active” also the most likely to have offspring and raise them to child-bearing age? It seems likely that these women would have more children, but if they neglected the children while searching for more sexual partners, that might make the children less likely to survive and pass along that trait.
Were the women who most wanted sex the ones most likely to have sex? The OP focuses only on men choosing women, which phrases the question in a way that makes women’s desire irrelevant, then asks why women’s desire hasn’t increased. It also seems to imagine a time when some early man made the first decision between choosing a woman for her beauty or for her willingness, but I don’t know when such a time might have existed. Ask the question another way, what if we were to make the choice now to favor nymphomania over beauty, would our eventual female descendants have a higher sex drive? I’m not sure we have that choice to make. How we choose our mates is sufficiently hard-wired in our brains that I don’t know if any conscious act of will could be wide spread enough to direct our evolution. The whole process is spectacularly self-perpetuating.
I hope those ideas don’t come across as patronizing or anti-feminist. They’re just my first impressions of reading the OP from a biological/scientific perspective.
Everyone’s missed the point. There are equal numbers of men and women, right? so they all go for one another, so the no of ugly women does not change, which is why humans dont evolve (also because we have no natural predators so the weak etc dont get killed off, but thats a hijack).
the “men picking women” scenario was really just a massive hypothetical situation, not meant to be based on any reality. i was trying to come up with a way to breed a perfect, hypersexual woman!
and if you think women are as sex-crazed as men, you don’t understand men (or all the scary thoughts we’ve been socialized into hiding)…
Or perhaps you misunderstand that women are socialized into hiding much more of their sexuality than men. For men, in general, the libido is an asset. For women, the messages are somewhat mixed. You may be confusing the public expression of female sexuality with the inner world of female sexuality.
It’s always amazing how people assume that ancient humans behaved in a similar way to the way we behave now. For example, perhaps harems were the norm and the alpha male would mate with dozens of women over some period of time. In that case it wouldn’t matter if a particular female was horny since there were plenty of females to choose from. Why would there have to be pairs… that might be a relatively recent invention (evolutionarily) and no, I’m not a polygomist.
Of course I do. . However, I’m pudgy, pasty-faced and I have gray in my beard. If I start talking about how there’s nothing to compare with Aquatic Mammalian Love now, I’ll lose my stronghold on the finest fins in the sea. No fool, I.
Cartooniverse ( Moved from Seamen Ave. to Ocean Parkway ).
. However, I’m pudgy, pasty-faced and I have gray in my beard. If I start talking about how there’s nothing to compare with Aquatic Mammalian Love now, I’ll lose my stronghold on the finest fins in the sea. No fool, I. 