A guest post from veterinarian & veteran science writer Cynthia Mills:
Sexual commerce is much like regular commerce in that there is a tendency towards short term thinking—that is, many CEO’s aim for quarterly profits at the cost of long term success, just as guys try to pick up girls in bars with no intention of forming long term loving relationships—e.g., marriages.
No need to tell you that this is primitive behavior. What
Binghampton University scientists Omar Tonsi Eldakar and David Sloan
Wilson have found, published in the November 6 issue of the journal
Science, is that this is also behavior that is un-evolved. It is also
male specific behavior—in one species at least, they have proved that
the females prefer not to hang out with jerks if they have a choice.
Specifically, they studied water striders, those long legged insects so fun to watch as they skitter across pond surfaces. Evidently, some male water striders like to come on a bit strong to the females. In
my day they would have been sidling up with line like, “hey baby,
what’s your sign?” I guess now they would be saying “hey baby, what’s
on your play-list?” Whatever line they are using, they are obnoxious,
and as such, clearly they would make lousy mates.
The water strider females agree. Unfortunately,
if the pond is small, they can’t get away and it ends up looking like
these creeps are successful—they get the girls, in other words, they
make baby water striders.
But if the pond is big enough and the girls can get away, they ditch these bozos and find better breeding stock. They
end up hanging out with the more ‘gentlemanly’ water striders; that is, the
ones that don’t hassle them, that hang back and look dignified, I guess.
In the end, the entire population did better—more baby water striders were produced—if the females could pick their mates carefully. The females produced three times more eggs if they could get away from the jerks.
Eldakar referred to the males as gentlemen versus jerks, Sloan preferred the terms psychopaths to jerks. What this observer wonders, though, (with her woefully suspicious mind) is—were these gentlemanly striders really such gentlemen? Maybe they’re just already married and that’s why they hang back? In which case they are just as creepy as the rest. Sigh.
Tags: Animal Behavior, Animal Communication, Animal Evolution, Animal Instincts, Animal Relationships
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