(Alternate, Twitter-sourced titles: “5 Ways to Prove Darwin Wasn’t Crazy,” “Shut the Eff Up and Science Already,” “5 Ways Psychology Needs to Evolve.”) Evolutionary psychology, the study of human psychological adaptations, does not have a popular or scientific reputation for being rigorous, even though there are rigorous, thoughtful scientists in the field. The field is [...]

It’s vacation time for Team Family, as my daughter calls us. While we’re skating and skiing, enjoy this repost from my old blog on hormonal contraceptives and mate choice. Imagine you are a single, heterosexual woman. You meet a nice man at the driving range, or on a blind date. You like him and he [...]

A paper that came out on August 20th in PNAS suggests a factor in semen that could induce ovulation. The idea that this could happen isn’t new, but identification of the factor that might do it certainly is. Ratto et al (2012) contend that they have found The Magical Semen Ingredient That Makes the Ladies [...]

Trigger warning: discussion of violence against women and graphic mention of miscarriage.

Who makes your food? Do you live alone and do everything yourself, or are you part of a partnership, roommate situation, or extended family where food is shared? Most likely, the more complicated your living situation, the more complicated the food allocation. Perhaps one person buys the food and another cooks it, or everyone shares [...]

As I mentioned Wednesday, Building Babies, the volume edited by me, Katie Hinde and Julienne Rutherford will be out in only a few months in one of the fastest turnarounds I know of for a book of this nature. It also happens to be awesome. I shared an interview with Lady Editor Katie on Wednesday, [...]

After almost two years of work, Building Babies is off to the presses, due to be out late August/early September! Building Babies: Primate Development in Proximate and Ultimate Perspective is a volume co-edited by me, Katie Hinde, and Julienne Rutherford about the many mechanisms and broader adaptations involved in – you guessed it – building [...]

In his SciAm post addendum (scroll to the bottom), Jesse Bering has been very gracious. This post really isn’t about that now-infamous advice column, but about broader ways to interrogate claims people make. This post is another way of thinking about Sci and my #scio12 session on “Sex, gender and controversy” (see our other session [...]

Dear Kate, I am an evolutionary psychologist, which, in and of itself, isn’t a bad thing and society largely accepts the need for people like me. However, our evil, feminist, not-patriarchal-enough culture fundamentally doesn’t get me in particular, a special snowflake among evolutionary psycholgoists. You see, I am an Evidence Free Science Provocateur. I am [...]

Tenth grade, at the lockers just before homeroom. My good friend Julie and I put away our coats. “How are you?” she asks. “Ugh,” I say. “I have a soccer game today but” – and here my voice drops to a whisper – “I got my period this morning.” Julie looks back at me, wide-eyed. [...]

Zebra finches are birds which, once they’ve found that special someone, will tend to stick with them. They are what is called ‘socially monogamous’, meaning they form pairs to mate and raise offspring over multiple breeding seasons, but with the occasional sneaky mating with the next door neighbour. Males court females by singing to them, [...]

Two-part barbed penises, a physical struggle and 20 minutes of penetration. That’s how some sea slugs do it. But the real shocker is that, for one species at least, those in the female role seem to engage in these bizarre, violent sexual encounters more often than might be biologically necessary. Nothing about sea-slug sex sounds [...]

Whales can boom their songs across thousands of kilometers of ocean, and elephants’ low-frequency calls can be heard by other pachyderms several kilometers away. But when body size is taken into consideration, these mammoth mammals produce but a relative whisper compared with other animals—especially one odd arthropod. The water boatman (Micronecta scholtzi), a 2.3-millimeter-long insect, [...]

Whether they are finding love in a flock or a lab, female Gouldian finches (Erythrura gouldiae) know what they’re looking for: a fit male with head feathers that match their own. And the females that don’t end up with a desirable mate are slower to lay eggs and wind up more physiologically stressed, according to [...]

For many, the warm glow of fireflies in the night air is a sure sign that summer has arrived. After dark, these bioluminescent beetles are generally visible only when they emit flashes of yellow, green or pale red from their lower abdomen as part of their mating ritual. Some species of firefly have found their [...]

Most mammals don’t live long past their reproductive years, failing to serve much evolutionary purpose after they can stop passing on their genes to offspring. Only three long-lived social mammalian species are known break that mold. Killer whales (Orcinus orca), pilot whales (Globicephala macrorhynchus) and humans (as well as possibly some other great apes) all [...]

As the seasons heat up annually, males and females start looking for mates, and two summers’ worth of steamy drama outside of a small European town have now been caught on tape. A big, strong male comes by to strut his stuff for a female, but she also seems interested in a smaller potential mate [...]

Octopuses that live in the deep open ocean are difficult enough to find. But try locating a “glass” octopus, which is nearly transparent. Floating in the dim midwaters, this gelatinous octopod looks almost like a be-suckered jellyfish. Rather than camouflaging like most known octopus species, the Vitreledonella richardi has taken this alternative approach to hide [...]

Today we’re returning to the deep to meet an octopus that, at first glance, hardly seems to earn that eight-limbed designation. Its very name sounds like an oxymoron—or a cautionary tale from a fishing accident. But the seven-armed octopus (Haliphron atlanticus) is a real, bonafide octopod—if a little misleading in its appellation. This deep-ocean octopus [...]

We continue our exploration of the many mysterious octopuses that live far from shore—and the eyes of humans. Today we meet the blanket octopus (Tremoctopus), a genus with four species that, until recently, had only been described based on female specimens. Why? Although they live in the vast open ocean, they are big (up to [...]

The octopus is a solitary creature. Most known species of octopus avoid the company their own kind. And you might, too, if you knew your conspecific were capable of cannibalism. So in public aquariums, these animals are usually kept in separate tanks to keep them safe (and to avoid any unsightly encounters in front of [...]

Of the hundreds of known octopus species, most are anti-social, practice safe sex (to avoid getting eaten by a mate) and lay just one clutch of eggs before dying. The poorly understood larger Pacific striped octopus, however, seems to break from these conventions: They are somewhat social, they mate face-to-face, and the females produce multiple [...]

I will be in Chicago this week attending science events aimed at grown-ups. If you don’t know the city, check out this tilt-shift video. Incredible! What started as a trip to view the work-in-progress film about cold fusion called “The Believers” (see my post), has become a bit of an adventure. I will briefly fill [...]

My latest piece for BBC Future is now up, and it focuses on how the things we may think of as odd, gross, or strange when it comes to human sexual practices are perhaps entirely normal for other species. Romantic relationships are complicated, and so is sex. Relationships can be fraught with the potential for [...]

Mindshare LA Presents: “Your Primal Instincts” …on the West Side! I’ll be speaking at a special sciencey Valentine’s Day version of Mindshare this month in Santa Monica along with Christopher Ryan (of Sex at Dawn fame) and science journalist Sharon Brock. We’ll all be covering the science of love from our own perspectives, and my [...]

Earlier this summer, evolutionary biologist, wildlife photographer, and (most importantly) my friend Neil Losin asked if I wanted to drive down to Long Beach with him to check out the grunion run, and try to get some decent photos of it. We went, and it was awesome, so I tweeted about it. You guys. You [...]

“The males often prefer eating to mating.” Apparently, giant panda dudes (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) in captivity would rather sit around and munch on bamboo than get it on with the females. And this is a problem at the Chengdu Panda Breeding and Research Centre, where scientists are urging the pandas to breed, for conservation purposes. What’s [...]