Quotes About Evolution

Given the prevalence of snake fears among humans and our closest genetic relatives, chimpanzees, it is reasonable to believe that those who were indifferent to dangerous snakes were more likely to die and less likely to become our ancestors.

Fears are like physical pain. Although they feel unpleasant, they help us to avoid the events that interfere with our strategies of survival.

Modern men have inherited from their ancestors psychological mechanisms that not only give priority to resources and status but also lead men to make great sacrifices and take great risks to attain resources and status.

Women today continue to want men who have resources, and they continue to reject men who lack resources.

molecular genetic studies show that there has been an acceleration of human adaptive evolution over the past 40,000 years, and especially during the past 10,000 years

Whereas signals of commitment prove highly effective in attracting long-term mates, creating an illusion of commitment can be effective in attracting and seducing a woman.

Of the more than 10 million animal species that exist, including roughly 5,000 mammals, only two species have been documented to show male-initiated coordinated coalitions that raid neighboring territories and lethally attack members of their own species: chimpanzees and humans.

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.

En la historia de los 3.5 mil millones de años de vida en la Tierra, somos la primera especie con la facultad de controlar nuestro destino. La perspectiva de hacerlo será excelente en la medida en que conozcamos nuestro pasado evolutivo.

Sólo examinando el complejo repertorio de estrategias sexuales humanas sabremos de dónde procedemos; sólo comprendiendo por qué han evolucionado controlaremos hacia dónde vamos.

As one researcher noted, "it seems likely that males suffer higher mortality than do females because in the past they have enjoyed higher potential reproductive success, and this has selected for traits that are positively associated with high reproductive success but at a cost of decreased survival" (Trivers, 1985, p. 314).

Nuestros mecanismos de emparejamiento son los fósiles vivientes que nos indican lo que somos y de dónde venimos.

Para alcanzar la armonía y la igualdad, tanto los hombres como las mujeres deben reconocer que están unidos en un proceso coevolutivo que comenzó hace mucho tiempo y que sigue operando en la actualidad a través de nuestras estrategias de emparejamiento.

Indeed, cuckolded men are universal objects of disrespect and derision.

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.

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.

One might think that killing would be a great turnoff to women, but apparently that's not the case.

In humans, guarding a bond must last more than days, months, or even years because love can last a lifetime. The dangerous emotion of jealousy evolved to fill this void. Love and jealousy are intertwined passions. They depend on each other and feed on each other.

Evolution refers to change over time in organic design. Characteristics, or "design features," that help an organism to survive and reproduce, relative to other organisms with different design features, get represented in future generations more than characteristics that are neutral or that impede survival and reproduction.

Despite utopian visions and wishful thinking about egalitarian values, all human societies are subject to strict, and sometimes frustrating, rules regarding status. All societies, throughout the eons of evolution, have had status hierarchies. For men, one of the great benefits of status has been its appeal to women.

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

Fulfilling each other's evolved desires is one key to harmony between a man and woman. A woman's happiness increases when the man brings more economic resources to the union and shows kindness, affection, and commitment. A man's happiness increases when the woman is more physically attractive than he is, and when she shows kindness, affection, and commitment.