![]() ![]() Sometimes the process is fast and easy to see. This simple process, discovered by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace in the nineteenth century, is the principal mechanism of evolution. And insofar as a particular gene confers an advantage in terms of survival or reproduction, that gene will spread. But usually individuals have different genes. If everyone had identical genes, then differences in survival and reproduction would be due to luck, not genes. ![]() Inevitably - such is life - some organisms do better than others at surviving and reproducing. If you succeed at both, you pass your genes on to your children. If you fail at either, your genes go with you to the grave. But from an evolutionary point of view, the purposes of life are clear: survival and reproduction. To see why, let's take a step back and think about how evolution works.įor most of us, caught up in the hurly-burly of our daily struggles, the purpose of life may seem elusive. Yet it is fundamental to the grand scheme of things. To a miserable organism sitting alone in a singles bar, genetic mixing might not seem worth the bother. The ultimate sex act - the act that all these antics have evolved to accomplish - is the mixing of genes, the creation of an individual with a new genetic makeup. In truth, these various practices are just the means to an end. In short, they must expend enormous energy shouting, "Choose me, choose me." And all for - what? Other creatures must wear gaudy costumes, be they fancy feathers or frivolous fins they must sing and dance for hours and hours they must perform prodigious feats, building and rebuilding nests and bowers. A male flower who wishes to be a Lothario and have his pollen strewn to as many mates as possible must seduce not female flowers but bees. To succeed, each of these methods requires a suite of different features. For flowering plants, sex is trusting the wind or an insect to carry pollen to a receptive female flower. A sea urchin will say sex is releasing eggs and sperm into the sea in the hope that they will, somehow, find each other in the waves. Scorpions, millipedes, and salamanders will tell you that sex is packets of sperm deposited on the ground for the female to sit on so they'll explode into her reproductive tract. Frogs and most fish will say the squirting of eggs and sperm in joint shudders of spawning. Humans and many other species will say copulation. But ask an assortment of creatures, what is sex? and they will give you different answers. If not for sex, much of what is flamboyant and beautiful in nature would not exist. But the most common question is mundane enough: Why did I become a sex expert? Quite simply, I decided to dedicate myself to sex when I realized that nothing in life is more important, more interesting - or more troublesome. Many of them concern matters beyond the wildest human imaginings. ![]() In my business I get asked a lot of questions. ![]()
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