Quotes About Mating

All of us descend from a long and unbroken line of ancestors who competed successfully for desirable mates, attracted mates who were reproductively valuable, retained mates long enough to reproduce, fended off interested rivals, and solved the problems that could have impeded reproductive success.

La evolución a través de la selección ha creado mecanismos de emparejamiento posiblemente mas complejos, elaborados y misteriosos que cualquier otro mecanismo orgánico conocido.

As a rule, throughout the animal kingdom, the more polygynous the mating system, the greater the differences between the sexes in terms of mortality. Polygynous mating selects for males who take risks—risks in competing with other males, risks in securing the resources desired by females, and risks in exposing themselves to dangers while pursuing and courting females.

Competition among men and selection by women of men high in status and resources are ultimately responsible for the evolution in males of risk-taking traits that lead to successful mating at the expense of a long life.

Because the reproductive stakes are higher for men than for women, more men than women risk being shut out of mating entirely. Men who are mateless for life are more numerous than similarly mateless women in every society.

This adaptive logic suggests that the greater risk taking—and hence greater death rate—should occur among men who are at the bottom of the mating pool and who therefore risk getting shut out entirely. Men who are unemployed, unmarried, and young are greatly overrepresented in risky activities, ranging from gambling to lethal fights.

In short, men low in desirability, as indicated by being unemployed, unmarried, and young, seem especially prone to risk taking, which sometimes becomes lethal. The point is not that killing per se is necessarily an adaptation but rather that men's evolved sexual psychologies are designed to respond to dire mating conditions by increasing the amount of risk they are willing to take.

The basic truth is that men who lack status become losers in the game of mating. Other men abuse them with impunity, take their metaphorical lunch money, and poach their partners.

Whereas for men affairs are often motivated by the desire for sexual variety, for women affairs are motivated more by emotional goals and may represent an effort to switch mates while they are still reproductively vibrant. Women seem to know that their desirability on the mating market will be higher if they leave their husbands sooner rather than later.

To paraphrase the evolutionary anthropologist Sarah Hrdy, "Men are one long breeding experiment run by women.

The implications of these fundamental trends in human mating psychology for a lasting relationship are profound. To maximize the chances of preserving a long-term bond, couples would do well to remain faithful; produce children together; secure ample economic resources; act kind, generous, and understanding; and attend to their mate's sexual and emotional desires. These actions do not guarantee a successful relationship, but they increase the odds substantially.

Women's reproductive success has historically been limited not by the number of mates they can accumulate but, rather, by the genetic quality of a single mate, by his ability to accrue resources, and by his willingness to funnel those resources to her and her children. All modern women have inherited these mating desires from their successful maternal ancestors.

Men who were indifferent to the sexual contact that their wives might have with other men ended up raising their rival's children more often than men who didn't tolerate their mates' indiscretions. So modern men have descended not from these indifferent men, but from men who strived, and succeeded more often than not, to maintain exclusive sexual control of their mates.

The fact that women who are engaged in casual sex as opposed to committed mating shift their mating desires to favor a man's extravagant lifestyle, his physical attractiveness, his masculine body, and even his risk-taking, cocky "bad-boy" qualities tells us that women have specific psychological mechanisms designed for short-term mating.

Quienes no se emparejan no se convierten en antepasados. Cada ser humano, por lo tanto, desciende de una línea larga e ininterrumpida de otros que se emparejaron con éxito a lo largo de millones de años. Si uno de nuestros antepasados no hubiera conseguido salvar los complejos obstáculos que supone el emparejamiento, no estaríamos vivos para reflexionar sobre tales hechos improbables.

The fact that there has never in history been a single case of women forming a war party to raid neighboring villages and capture husbands tells us something important about the nature of gender differences—that men's mating strategies are often more violent than women's.

You let him touch you," Todd observed idly. My eyes widened. "I do not." "Yes you do. Just little touches here and there. He puts his hand on your arm or back, he stands close to you, getting you used to him . . . it's a mating ritual. Like March of the Penguins." "It has nothing to do with mating rituals. It's a Texas thing. People are touchy-feely here.

Think of controversy as the necessary mating ritual before various good ideas can give birth to progress.

Damned mating heat. Lawe is threatening to join a monastery and Rule's threatening to quit. Why don't you two try to show the younger guys it can be fun instead of taking a note out of everyone else's books and letting it drive you insane? -Jonas

He told me that when a male honeybee mates, its testicles explode and the penis is left inside the queen bee.

Granted, my perspective is different from that of nonwizards, but marching out into the woods, looking for a very large and very powerful creature by blasting out what you're pretty sure are territorial challenges to fight (or else mating calls) seems … somewhat unwise.

In its purest form, dating is auditioning for mating (and auditioning means we may or may not get the part).

A male scorpion is stabbed to death after mating. In chess, the powerful queen often does the same to the king without giving him the satisfaction of a lover.

Really rather fascinating, you know," he confided, and I recognized, with an internal sigh, the song of the scholar, as identifying a sound as the terr-whit! of a thrush. Harking to the call of a kindred spirit, Frank at once settled down to the mating dance of academe, and they were soon neck-deep in archetypes and the parallels between ancient superstitions and modern religions. I shrugged and made my own way through the crowd to the bar and back, a large brandy-and-splash in each hand.