Mating Madness

Joe is a good man, average looking, caring, sensitive, supportive, has a good job, car, savings and makes the safe and sensible choice in life. But he can never get a date and none of his classmates from school remember him. Fonzi on the other hand, drives a motorbike, sports a killer leather jacket, which makes him dashingly good looking. He doesn’t have a job, drinks in the morning, and eats off his mother’s savings, but is charming as the devil.

If you were a woman looking for a date, whom would you fall for? The sensible Joe or Fonzi?

Fonzi right. Why would women want to make the risky decision and choose Fonzi?

Evolutionary biologists working on cockroaches have given us proof for a theory that explains this kind of behavior. The reason we have to drag in evolutionary biologists to explain this behavior is that this is an evolutionary conundrum, because mate choice is believed to bring about better fitness (survival of genes) to the female and male. But in such behavior it’s the opposite effect for the females. Imagine Fonzi’s girlfriend bringing up a kid with no support from Fonzi. This is detrimental to the fitness of the woman. This has been reported in other animals also. (So we are not the only superficial animals who make stupid decisions).

So how does the organism reconcile with the loss of fitness when it goes for the hot guy? Scientists have found out that this direct cost of choosing the hot guy is exceeded by the fitness that offsprings enjoy when mating with the hot guy. In other words offsprings from mating with a hot guy has more chance of survival and passing on his genes than when mated with Joe.

Although this theory has been around for some time, recent experiments with cockroaches have proved this idea. Cockroaches were separated into ‘attractive’ and ‘unattractive’ (believe me, there are attractive cockroaches). They did this by letting males have sex with females in two different ‘mating tournaments’, the males that were able to get laid twice were ‘attractive’ and ones that couldn’t even once was ‘unattractive’. The fitness of the offsprings from random females mated with attractive and unattractive males were measured. For offsprings from mating with attractive males, both offsprings had better fitness than offsrings of females that mated with unattractive males. Males were more attractive and females produced larger number and size of eggs.

So all you angry dads. Be Calm; your daughter has made the right choice. Your grandkids gonna rock!