Why Is Sex Fun?: The Evolution of Human Sexuality (SCIENCE MASTERS) - Softcover

Diamond, Jared

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1780226888 ISBN 13: 9781780226880

Publisher: W&N, 2015

Synopsis

A fascinating insight into how human sexuality came to be the way it is now - Jared Diamond explains why we are different from the animal kingdom.

Why are humans one of the few species to have sex in private? Why do humans have sex any day of the month or year, including when the female is pregnant, beyond her reproductive years, or between her fertile cycles? Why are human females one of the few mammals to go through menopause?

Human sexuality seems normal to us but it is bizarre by the standards of other animals. Jared Diamond argues that our strange sex lives were as crucial to our rise to human status as were our large brains. He also describes the battle of the sexes in the human and animal world over parental care, and why sex differences in the genetic value of parental care provide a biological basis for the all-too-familiar different attitudes of men and women towards extramarital sex.

About this title

Review

Many of us pursue fitness because we want to remain attractive to partners and potential partners, and we stay healthy so we can continue to have sex with those partners. But why do people care so much about sex? This book, written by an evolutionary biologist, explains how all the weird quirks of human sexuality came to be: sex with no intention of procreation, invisible fertility, sex acts pursued in private--all common to us, but very different from most other species. Why Is Sex Fun? asks us to look at ourselves in a brand-new way, and richly rewards us for doing so.

About the Author

Jared Diamond is professor of physiology at UCLA Medical School and the author of The Third Chimpanzee.

Edition details

• Publisher: W&N
• Publication date: 2015
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1780226888
• ISBN 13: 9781780226880
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224