Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Why Humans are Different from Other Species...

And it has nothing to do with opposable thumbs or standing upright. Take A Peek

Throws evolutionary conventional wisdom on its head. So to speak.

Peace, Linda

8 comments:

  1. Darn. Hate when that happens. Try this, Mr. V. Peace...

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  2. On it's "head."
    Guffaw.
    K, gotta go to the washroom now and test a theory..

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  3. I don't buy the thrust of their argument. It's too fundamentalist in its thinking. Evolution is pretty passive; anything can show up, and if it's got survival power then it has a better chance of sticking to the wall. But that doesn't mean everything that sticks has survival value, and certainly things that are only relatively recent developments (the article claims masturbation to be one) don't have to possess such value. Evolution left us with exaggerated senses of pleasure relating to sexual stimuli for very obvious reasons. But once established, you get species going for the stimuli, not only the genetic ends it serves. Much older primate species engaged in homosexual activity for the same reason we happily spank the monkey - the drive was left very powerful by evolution and so we did stuff with it. If the masturbation to ejaculation were so useful, it ought to have appeared in those other species they looked at. The hand, the imagination and other features all had other reasons to develop, and then they gave us this. For all evolution knew it could be what killed us off. Hopefully God has some sterile wipes on hand should that arise.

    What? ... What?

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  4. masturbation is an evolved strategy for shedding old sperm while making room for new, fitter sperm.

    There you have it! Definitive scholarly research on Spankin' Hank, Choking the Chicken, Bobbing the Knob, Polishing the Helmet, Flogging the Log, Pounding the Pud..well you get the gist.

    Thank you Linda for sharing the field notes to this very important discovery.

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  5. My favorite part of the article is where it says that frequency of erotic fantasy is positively correlated with intelligence!

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  6. John, I think you have a point. You too, MJ. But this was a fun read nonetheless, hmmm?

    I love science. Peace...

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