SEX
 

I'll try to keep this as short as I can. I've been known to start extremely long read threads. Well, it's hard for me to keep them short because I'm, well...too inquisitive? I guess.:o:p

o.k. I've been getting ready for finals so my study group and I have been visiting quite frequently the last couple of weeks. Last night we were studying reproduction/spay/neuter in dogs and cats. That kind of thing. Well, sometimes we get off subject and start debating about other topics when we should be studying. We were discussing how sexual attraction in humans and animals are very similar. A few students in my group didn't agree, but I wasn't alone in my thoughts.

Like pheromones for example. I don't know their full role in humans, but pheromones have a huge impact in the animal kingdom. Like in mice. They have cells in the lining of their nose designed to pick up sex hormones released by potential mates. In humans, we seem to go for specific body odors, especially if it's a really nice smelling cologne or perfume. We also look at symmetry when we look at the opposite sex. It's similar in animals. Like in peacocks. The male with the most symmetrical feathers walks away with the female. Men tend to buy fancy cars and nice houses to attract a woman. Bowerbirds are no different. They attract females by showing off their nest, which they decorate with the shiniest pieces of litter or debris they can get. What's cute and funny about this, is the female bowerbird stays in the nest for a few minutes to observe it. If she doesn't like it, she flies away. If she likes it, he gets her. Very funny.:p Even the music we listen to is based on sex. Rock stars get more than their share of women. Similar are whales and birds when they sing to attract females. Mice also do it through ultrasonic sounds. I'm by no means saying that animals and humans are similar in intelligence, but we are sexually.

There's a member on greekchat who starts a lot of freaky threads in the D&R forums, and we all laugh but there's a lot of truth in the threads that are started by this member. I'm not picking on this member,:) I'm just trying to make a point. Not my sort of thing, but we all know some people have multiple partners, but it's similar to what antelopes do. It's typical in the topi antelope which have month long mating rituals. The female is fertile for only one day, and she mates with several partners (I think it may be up to 10, but I'm not sure) on several occasions each time.

Look at the guys who are surrounded by a circle of women. They seem to attract other women outside of the circle. This is true with a certain species of fish. I don't remember the species but the male with the most females attracts more.

Soooooooooooo is there a science to attracting the opposite sex?

Are mating strategies still driven by the evolutionary urge for men to spread their seed?

I think there is. If the 1st few seconds of a 1st date go wrong, you might as well forget it. People judge photos of faces according to attractiveness, likeability and trustworthiness in the 1st few seconds. Only prolonged contact can reverse a poor 1st impression.

Again, I'm only comparing humans and animals because in school we do it all the time. 99% of human genes share a comparable version in mice, and many of them appear in the same order in our chromosomes. We also have similar reproductive and nervous systems. That's why I compare and also why the mouse is used as a principle model for biomedical research.

Sorry so long...again.:o:)

CG...I agree with you...there is a science to it but moreso, just plain and simple, like attracts like be it scent or visual.


I do think that when you see someone, initially you already have an idea if you are physically attracted to them.

I do however have a question...

Something someone said to me a long time ago and I think there is a bit of truth to it and I would like to know what you think.

True or false:

Once a woman sees a man (especially if he is interested in her), she already knows from what she sees whether or not she will have sex with him.

I suggest you go read Sperm Wars and Red Queen.

Can't win the game if you don't know the rules.

Hmmmmmm...

Sometimes true, sometimes false. When I first met my ex, I thought at first glance a) he looked nothing like what I thought he looked like (we knew each other from work e-mails), and b) I thought he spent more time on his hair than I did.

He knew from the moment he first saw me that he wanted me. It took another few meetings for me to get there, but once I was at that point, I never wanted to let go. It just about killed me when he broke up with me (via e-mail and text, the bastard).

And lucky me, I get to spend two days with him next week. Yea. :rolleyes:

just a quick response to this, I think it's generally true, at least for me, sometimes things happen between people and you change your mind about them, but I think for the most part, women know ;)

"The Red Queen" is a good book on the topic, as Coramoor already said.

Yes there's a science whether it be biological or sociological, and no we don't completely
understand it yet.

Pheremones are also sort of up in the air as far as how much they effect humans.

Your information on mice genes is sort of misleading, similar is not the same.

Daemon, when you say like attracts like, my question is why? What causes the attraction? :)

I think for men it's visual, but for women it's for more reasons than that. At least it is for me. I mean, at 1st sight of course that would drive me to want to know more about him, but I wouldn't have sex with him just based appearance alone.

I think there is some truth to what you said about sex for some women. I think it's all about certain personality criteria though. Women are attracted to the tribal leader, someone who exhibits those characteristics of status. I do think that a lot of women that do the speed dating thing pretty much have made their minds up about a guy within 30 seconds of meeting him. For me and for some women, a simple smile can sometimes be enough to attract me to a guy.

CG...luv ya like a play cousin...but that last part is bullcrap:) ....nah just playing but really we are talking about the base level of sex.....before the convo really starts

See....some women have been conditioned to repress that id which gives them that urge to jump the guy's bones...LOL.

Thus, they 'want to get to know us better...'

I mean come on...you see 3 guys across the room...which one is gonna stand out?

Remember this too, women tend (not all let me say that now!!) to be more emotional than men when it comes to sex.

Yes, men may want more than just visual...but we are simply isolating one thing...sex...physical urges...putting everything else aside, we have to like what what we SEE first and then it goes from there.

What causes attraction...I dunno...I have an abstract theory that geometry has a role in it...hehehe!

Well anyway on an offside, has anyone ever noticed the dating patterns of some people? For instance a person may have 4 different women they may have dated and they may all be similar in height shape or weight?


Oh yeah....ps...I wasn't saying that women would have sex with men just based on appearance alone, what I should say is, that his chances are increased by the what she sees and his chances either go up or down from the first time he opens his mouth.


Hmmm....sounds like someone needs to channel Samatha from Sex and the City and find out if what I am saying is true!

Well, as far as pheromones are concerned the idea that the opposite sex responds to specific odors and chemicals has led to sprays that can be purchased in some stores and on the internet. Of course at this point there's little evidence that such products work, so I agree here.

Drolefille, mice have been used for biomedical research for more than a century now. Even with the advent of increasingly sophisticated genetic engineering techniques and more powerful computer technology, mice have actually become stand ins for humans upon which it seems every imaginable disease or condition is being studied, along with compounds to treat them. Hardly a week goes by without some new findings about heart disease, cancer, obesity, anxiety ect ect. From the beginning, these studies are all based on mouse models. By some estimates 25 million mice are used in medical research each year. I'm not saying mice are always the main source. Sometimes it depends on the study. Yeast, worms, fruit flies and even computer models all offer excellent insight into the workings of cell biology. We use mice a lot in school because they make better tools to study the immune, endocrine, nervous, cardiovascular, skeletal, and other physiological systems of humans and in my case, other mammals. Mice get many of the same diseases that humans do, rather it be cancer, diabetes, osteoporosis, glaucoma, and to top it off, they even develop anxiety and aggressive behavior.

I know similar is not the same which is why I said 99% rather than 100%. I hardly think my information on mice is misleading at all.

Oh, don't give me that. You were so serious. Liar.:):p

Yes. This is right on. The minute he opens his mouth is what does it for me. If he's a hottie that's one thing, but if he's hot, but not very smart, romantic and can't hold a conversation with me then....uhhgg.:(

These studies use "mouse models" for the following reasons (in this order):

-Cost
-Lessened "noise" in the data due to outside factors, whether they be genetic interference, antibodies, etc. (these are Knockout mice, remember)
-Ethical considerations (it's hard to use humans)

The following has never, ever been a consideration in mice studies:

-Proximity to human research/similarity to the human body (in literal comparison with other animals; this may be true when compared with yeast, not so much with monkeys)

I'm saying this to provide context to my responses to your later points.

You're mixing your terms here. Cell biology is not similar to complex inter-system diagnoses of complex behavioral patterns (such as pheromonal interactions, or the existence of something as nebulous as "attraction"). Mice can be subject to diseases similar to humans, but that is simply because they are mammals - it is not some great, lucky advantage to the knockout mouse.

Mouse studies can indeed be misleading, by their nature. Let's take a look, again, at the reasons for using mice:

Reason 1: Cost
-These studies can be replicated, improving their utility - however, the assays are cheap and can be run with few controls, leading to a large number of trials (and outliers) that people then post on places such as message boards as gospel (for example).

Reason 2: Lack of interference (the "knockout" quality)
-This is both the best and worst part about lab studies on mice - the lack of interference is the very reason why the assays do not have any direct applicability to humans. The "noise" in the data may actually be the very interaction that prevents human use of a particularly novel or innovative observation - read up on gene therapy and mouse studies for more information on how this can be a massive problem. Just in the examples you've used, the fact that pheromones influence mice (which have little to no sociological influences as we would know them) has almost no applicability to a complex thinking organism that is subject to hundreds of outside factors (including choice). The "noise" avoided through mouse assays is actually the "signal" we need to root out.

Reason 3: Ethical considerations
-Ideally, this should not apply to an attraction study.

So the bottom line: mouse studies can be quite misleading, and should not be considered "99%" at anything except for the direct application to mice, or as an object lesson to drive future research toward its empirical end.

The moral? We can talk about bowerbirds and compare behavior, but we fall prey to logical fallacies very rapidly in these connections. Particularly, sociological connections between man and other animals is often colored by selection and confirmation bias - is buying a nice car really similar to collecting pretty things? If so, why aren't we comparing females wearing low-cut tops to female bowerbirds? Are we seeing what we want to see out of the extraordinarily simple mating methods of mice versus humans?

I think the question here is flawed. It sounds like you're looking for ONE cause; as if it isn't possible for attraction to have several "causes". One plus one plus one equals three, but one isn't a "cause" of three.

Ouch. There's a slap in men's faces.

Again with the generalizations.

Look, I see where you're going with the whole mice/human comparison thing. Lots of scientists have gained lots of information through testing mice (and other animals). Studying one thing can often be an avenue to understanding something else, but when you're talking about something as complex as human sexual attraction, then the comparison is way off.

We have no way of knowing whether the ugly boy mice have better communication skills than the hottie boy mice. And since this seems to play a role in human attraction, well, surely you can see how the comparison doesn't quite work.

KSig RC I agree with what you said about cost. I'm not saying mouse studies are exactly accurate. I just said that human genes share a comparable version in the mouse, and many of them "appear" to be in the same order in our chromosome. I didn't say they "are" in the same order. I wasn't mixing cell biology with behavioral patterns. I was responding to why I don't think mice studies are totally inaccurate. I already said that the pheromones are not yet known in humans.

I agree with some of the things you mentioned, but mice were used early on because highspeed computers and scanning electron microscopes didn't exist 100 years ago. Other organisms or cultured cell lines can be better models for some purposes. It really depends on the question being asked. That dictates the best model to use. Though mice are stand ins in some studies, they are still not a true substitute for humans. Treatments that work one way in mice can't always predict the same outcome in people. I'm aware of that, but we use them because of some similarities. Scientist constantly strive to create mice that more closely resemble human physiology. Nowhere is there a greater problem than in immunology research. Though we have many afflictions in common, I agree, mice have not evolved with a susceptiblity to many of the diseases that affect humans. Like HIV for example. To further complicate such research, the immune system involves many organs and systems throughout the body.

Consequently, understanding the genentics of the immune system isn't just a matter of inserting a gene into a mouse and waiting to see what happens. We must instead learn how genes behave as part of a complex network. It's also not trivial to simply transplant human cells into a mouse. You make great points, but they do make great models for studying humans and other mammals.

I really don't think you read anything I wrote - it's almost as if you simply regurgitated some notes from a class you took last semester, and I'm not sure why . . . perhaps I was unclear (I've been known to have that problem), so I'll reiterate, and hopefully not come off as a jerk or anything:

Mice do not, in fact, make great models for studying humans. Mice make acceptable models when conditions dictate a certain kind of assay or a certain "scale" is all that is available.

This is easy to prove, by counting the number of FDA approvals that have happened because of mouse studies (or, in a rather less snarky fashion, the number of failed attempts that were deemed a potential success after animal trials), but that's neither here nor there.

Running out the "mice use pheromones and ultrasound signals" line, similar to using peacock feathers or gay gorillas, has a strong chance of confirmation bias - Occam's Razor here. It's a fun thought experiment, but I think you're carrying it too far - it may be that I'm more skeptical, but I also may simply have more experience or a more realistic view.

I think you're too trusting of scientific findings that are of low real-world utility, and far too trusting of theoretical connections between animal sociology/mating behavior and human behavior, and I think this is connected to a misunderstanding of how to use research such as mouse studies. See: the mouse tar-painting studies for a great example of how to use mouse research - it even has epidemiological connections, so the complexity is much higher than usual.