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Why is Sex Fun?: the evolution of human sexualityPoor nutrition may leave you with a scrawny body and disfigured face, but it rarely causes your pubic hair to fall out. Even weak ugly men and skinny ugly women sport axillary hair. Men's beards, body hair, and low-pitched voices as signals of adolescence, and men's and women's hair whitening as a signal of age, seem equally devoid of inner meaning. Like the red spot on a gull's bill and many other animal signals, these human signals are cheap and wholly arbitrary-many other signals can be imagined that would serve equally well. Is there any human signal that exemplifies the operation of Fisher's runaway selection model or Zahavi's handicap principle? At first, we seem devoid of exaggerated signaling structures comparable to a widowbird's sixteen-inch tail. On reflection, however, I wonder whether we actually do sport one such structure: a man's penis. One might object that it serves a nonsignaling function and is nothing more than well-designed reproductive machinery. However, that is not a serious objection to my speculation: we have already seen that women's breasts simultaneously constitute signals and reproductive machinery ...» |
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