Sperm Wars: Infidelity, Sexual Conflict, and Other Bedroom Battles PDF

Rating: Author: Robin Baker ISBN : Product Detai New from Format: PDF

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Published to acclaim and controversy a decade ago, Sperm Wars is a revolutionary thesis about sex that turned centuries-old biological assumptions on their head. Evolution has programmed men to conquer and monopolize women while women, without ever knowing they are doing it, seek the best genetic input on offer from potential sexual partners. In this book, best-selling author Robin Baker reveals these new facts of life: ten percent of children are not fathered by their "fathers;" less than one percent of a man's sperm is capable of fertilizing anything (the rest is there to fight off all other men's sperm); "smart" vaginal mucus encourages some sperm but blocks others; and a woman is far more likely to conceive through a casual fling than through sex with her regular partner. It's no wonder that Sperm Wars is a classic of popular science writing that will surprise, entertain, and even shock.

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• Product Details
• Table of Contents
• Reviews

• File Size: 583 KB
• Print Length: 404 pages
• Page Numbers Source ISBN: 1560258489
• Publisher: Basic Books (January 3, 2006)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
• Language: English
• ASIN: B0046A8SEU
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• X-Ray:
  Not Enabled
• Lending: Not Enabled
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #59,778 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
  • #13 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Professional & Technical > Medical eBooks > Basic Science > Physiology
  • #29 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Professional & Technical > Professional Science > Biological Sciences > Biology
  • #29 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Science > Biological Sciences > Biology
• #13 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Professional & Technical > Medical eBooks > Basic Science > Physiology
• #29 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Professional & Technical > Professional Science > Biological Sciences > Biology
• #29 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Science > Biological Sciences > Biology

Sperm Wars: Infidelity, Sexual Conflict, and Other Bedroom Battles PDF

Among animals, humans seem unusually obsessed with sex and thus a bit separated from the rest of the animal biology, which seems to feature a preponderance of 10-second sex acts. Robin Baker uses a lifetime of university study to try to explain human behavior objectively through case studies and discussions at at rate of one per chapter. It is a mixture of illumination, rationalization and sadly some repetition as the explanations seem to cycle through in the ~33 chapters. Most of the time, he hits his points, but sometimes he seems to miss obvious ones; for instance in the "rough sex" chapter, the woman's reproductive advantage in marrying a mate is discussed but the male perspective in such mate exploration is not. Mate selection by physical endowment is essentially entirely neglected, yet in human societies it is the norm that most people have multiple partners over a lifetime. In fact, in this book sperm wars really alludes to instances in which multiple matings occur in a short enough time span that sperm of different mates are selected in the woman's reproductive tract--a topic of a number of chapters. Practically every sexual combination is presented and explained, even when it is a bit stretched, as for instance the explanation as to why homo- or bisexuality, lesbian or gay behavior may contribute to reproductive success. In his role, the author is largely amoral--an observing biologist trying to explain a role for behavior in reproductive success rather than judging its societal context--though sometimes outcome of the occasional case study seem to bear moral shadings. For those who want to learn about the biology underlying human sexual behavior, this book has some interesting ideas.

'Sperm Wars' is the type of book to give sociobiology a bad name. Of course, to many social scientists, rightly or wrongly, sociobiology already has a bad name. This is why the term is now rarely used and euphemisms such as behavioural ecology and evolutionary psychology were invented.

(I use the term sociobiology rather than the more fashionable terms evolutionary psychology and human behavioural ecology advisedly, because many of Baker's claims actually deal with physiology rather than psychology or behaviour and therefore, strictly speaking, fall outside the remit of behavioural ecology and psychology.)

Among the most familiar of the many charges levelled against evolutionary psychology are the claims, firstly, that evolutionary psychologists spin speculative untested (or even inherently untestable) `just-so' stories, and, secondly, that evolutionary psychologists are so-called `ultra-Darwinians' or `Darwinian fundamentalists' who claim that every human trait is necessarily an adaptation. In general, these charges have little merit.

However, Sperm Wars, is the exception that proves the rule. For once, both these familiar charges have some merit. In respect of virtually all of Baker's claims, an alternative non-adaptive explanation in which the characteristic in question is viewed as a by-product of more general purpose adaptations rather than itself adaptive is available and in some cases at least as plausible as Baker's own account.