Every week, I share my notes from great TED talks. Here’s the complete list (pardon the load time, it’s a long page).
Here are two talks from Chris Ryan about sex. I took notes on both, but the notes were smushed together like a chicken pot pie so it’s not clear what set of notes are from which talk.
Chris Ryan on sex
- humans are more related to chimps and bonobos than one elephant species to another
- the standard narrative: men trade resources for sex, a woman’s fidelity, and childcare
- this has been the narrative since Darwin’s time
- but it sets up male vs female as competing, oppositional genders
- the standard narrative is wrong; instead, it’s about sperm competition INSIDE the woman’s reproductive tract, within an ovulatory cycle
- this is fierce egalitarianism — everything is shared, which is the smartest way to survive in a foraging society
- monogamous primates (gorillas, gibbons) have small testicles and penii
- …while promiscuous primates (humans, chimps) have larger testicles and penii
- the human female is rare in being available for sex through her ENTIRE menstrual cycle
- humans have testicles in a sac outside of the body to keep them cool so they’re available for sex at any time
- A chimp’s swollen ass signals she’s available for sex with different males; this confused Darwin because he expected a pair-bonding relationship
- our sex act to birth ratio is 1000 to 1, whereas for gorillas (monogamous) is 10 to 1
- most mammals don’t have sex unless there’s a good chance of fertilizing
- why do we have so much sex? we use sex to develop complex social networks — common in intelligent social species like dolphins and chimps
- sex is like vegetarianism — it’s healthy, it’s social
- examples
- in a SW China village, women and men are sexually autonomous, both have many sexual partners; when woman has a child, it’s cared for by her, her sisters and her brothers; the biological father is a non-issue
- in a S American (?) village, children are viewed as product of many men’s sperm, so if you want a strong, smart, and funny child, you have sex with those types of partners; the partners all recognize the role they played in fathering the child
Here’s the full list of TED notes!