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Why do humans prefer to mate in private?
Anecdotal evidence suggests that human beings generally prefer to mate in private—but why? And why is it so rare? Other than humans, only one other species has demonstrated a preference for privacy during mating: Arabian babblers. To learn more, [anthropologist Yitzchak] Ben Mocha retrieved data from 4,572 accounts of cultural studies—ethnographies—and studied them looking for what he describes as normal sexual practices. Those involved were not trying to shock or avoid punishment for engaging in taboo practices such as incest—and were also not in the pornography business. He found that virtually every known culture practices private mating—even in places where privacy is difficult to find. He also looked for examples of other animals mating in private, and found none, except for the babblers. He also found that there were no explanations for it, and in fact, there were very few other people wondering why humans have such a proclivity. And, not surprisingly, he was unable to find any evolutionary theories on the topic.
Journal Reference:
Yitzchak Ben Mocha. Why do human and non-human species conceal mating? The cooperation maintenance hypothesis, Proceedings of the Royal Society B (DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2020.1330)
(Score: 4, Interesting) by EJ on Thursday August 06 2020, @06:55PM (13 children)
Scientists completely ignore the possibility of God, therefore their studies will always be based on flawed assumptions. Sure, you can't just say "God did it" for everything, but sometimes it's at least possible that it's the truth.
Look at domesticated dogs. Humans meddled in their breeding. It wasn't natural, just like the frankenplant species we create. Let some future scientist look at things that we created, and try to figure out how or why they evolved that way. Look at bananas. They don't even have seeds anymore. They would never naturally evolve to lose the ability to reproduce.
The Adam and Eve story with shame of knowledge of good and evil came from somewhere. Is it the chicken or the egg? Is it some ancient version of this study that tried to explain the same thing, or is it the actual accounting of the real reason? We may never find answers for many scientific questions because scientists refuse to look in certain "taboo" places like extra-planar influences.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Barenflimski on Thursday August 06 2020, @09:50PM (7 children)
I'm not sure if you are serious. Are you saying that its not worth asking the question as it may not have a logical answer as "God" did it? Are you being sarcastic? Are you suggesting that we should have a section in our scientific papers that defaults to, "We don't know, but god did it?"
I'm not sure I agree with your premise that "extra-planar" is taboo. I was under the impression that it wasn't taboo, it was just a dead end with our current understanding of how things work as anecdotal is hardly evidence. I'd love to find out that the ghosts I've seen are real but we couldn't even find the ectoplasm to measure.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by EJ on Thursday August 06 2020, @10:27PM (6 children)
The fact that you think I'm being sarcastic is evidence of the problem. It's like scientists believe it is possible to completely understand and prove everything, and if they haven't found the answer they just haven't looked hard enough yet. That can take them down a rabbit hole of uselessness where they end their lives without contributing anything useful that they could have otherwise.
It is entirely possible that humans experienced a breeding situation similar to dogs. Look at science fiction like Stargate. Maybe we aren't a product of randomness as scientists would like to believe. We could be entirely synthetic, and unlike any other life in the universe because we did not evolve through natural means like scientists think we must have.
Whether or not you believe in the Christian God, it is completely possible that some power beyond our comprehension interferes with our universe. It's even possible that we are all just simulations in a computer program. Maybe scientists think that's not useful information, but it possibly is. If it turns out, as current questions about relativistic inconsistencies being found in the astronomical observations imply, that the rules don't always apply, it could help to direct our attention to more important areas of study.
Too many scientists refuse to believe in God because they want to be God. That can put blinders on them and hobble their efforts to understand things that are truly outside their control.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2020, @10:48PM (4 children)
Funny, those same scientists who you claim 'wanted to be god' figured out things like electricity, circuits, signals, and so forth as well as vaccines and antibiotics. If they were just satisfied with 'god did it', you probably wouldn't be alive and you definitely wouldn't have an electronic computing device to share your opinions.
Or did you pray to read Soylentnews and god posted for you?
Every piece of technology is built on people who kept looking for answers. If every scientist thought like you we'd all be primitive hunter-gatherers. Your argument is absurd - where would you draw the line? "Figuring out nuclear physics made sense, but you shouldn't investigate quantum mechanics." "Figuring out bacteria makes sense, but you shouldn't investigate viruses." "Figuring out adrenaline makes sense, but don't investigate testosterone." What?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by HiThere on Thursday August 06 2020, @11:03PM (3 children)
It's not an absurd argument, merely a useless one. Solipsism is one of the valid philosophical positions. There's absolutely no was to disprove it. Similar arguments apply to "because some god willed it so". Your car may only run by favor of Pele (Hawaiian goddess of fire). There's no way to disprove this, but it's not a useful position to take. And there are few reasons to prefer some particular god over any others except "Well, I'm familiar with that one".
FWIW, when properly understood I *do* believe that everything that happens is due to the action of the gods, but I wouldn't say will, because they're not anthropomorphic. They're distributed fragments of DNA that are commonly shared among people and cause them to feel certain things and react in certain ways...though *do* realize that that's an externalized description, and not the way it looks/feels to the person who experiences their actions. Generally one "is just moved to act that way", or "is just attracted to ?". Occasionally they can erupt into consciousness, but if it's more than a very brief eruption you're crazy, or "ridden by a loa". From within the mind it looks/feels like the actions historically attributed to gods. From outside it looks like ... well, Jung called them archetypes, but he misunderstood them because he didn't understand evolution, genetics, or computer programming. Think of them as a built-in ROM library of routines that are activated by the lower levels of the brain's OS, and that consciousness is the very top layer, where the brain is talking to itself about itself.
OTOH, that's just my model of what I've seen and understood. I can think of no way to prove it. But it seems to me to fit historical usage of the word.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by ChrisMaple on Friday August 07 2020, @03:46AM (1 child)
If you believe solipsism is correct, you cannot have any objection to my bashing your head in.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday August 07 2020, @12:25PM
There's a world of difference between "correct" and "a valid philosophical position"
The latter only implies that the position isn't logically inconsistent or somehow disproven (often a very difficult thing to do in philosophy)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 07 2020, @04:29PM
I don't think you're answering the same question. The parent post author, EJ, was indicating that 'god' is an explanation for why things work and more importantly that humans can't understand it.
I don't mind if Pele is the reason my car works, provided I can understand what Pele is doing. It's when you insist I shouldn't even inquire that I have an issue.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday August 06 2020, @11:08PM
Evidence of the problem, that people don't believe in things that have absolutely no evidence to support them?
Even if God really did do it, the question remains *how* did God do it. There's presumably some physical mechanism It put in place to control the behavior of physical things.
And if we understand enough of the mechanisms, it's very likely we'd see evidence of the nature and intent of the one who put them in place. Thus far we've seen none, but have seen a great deal of evidence of severe design shortcomings that suggest that either God is incompetent, or evolution is blind.
The former goes strongly against the (generally presumed) nature of (a personal) God, while the latter is exactly what you would expect of evolution. Which suggests that if God does exist, It chose evolution as Its tool, and didn't interfere much if at all in the details for at least the last half-billion years.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ChrisMaple on Friday August 07 2020, @03:00AM (1 child)
The God concept leads immediately and inescapably to contradictions, thus God cannot ever exist.
The concept is utterly foreign to science. It should be utterly foreign to humanity.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday August 07 2020, @12:31PM
That depends very much on the particular concept of God you're talking about. The popular Christian God preached in church is rife with logical inconsistencies, while the God believed in by scholars in the Christian clergy bears almost no resemblance, and is far less inconsistent. And when you get away from the Abrahamic religions many of the gods present no logical inconsistentices at all.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday August 07 2020, @03:16AM (1 child)
Please, for your own sake, do *not* run Creationist/ID arguments. They are the single strongest source of *mal*theism it is possible to draw from, and I am continually gobsmacked that their proponents don't see this. The tl;dr is that if something deliberately made all this, as it is, all of it, that something is some combination of evil, incompetent, insane, and/or immoral.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 07 2020, @07:53AM
"I am that I am".
Kinda loosely defined, no?
(Score: 2) by ChrisMaple on Friday August 07 2020, @03:43AM
Today's commodity bananas have vestigial seeds, and for all practical purposes are seedless. However, they did occur naturally, perhaps by sporting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sport_(botany) [wikipedia.org], perhaps by growth from a naturally mutated seed. Whatever was the case, these naturally occurring plants are considered preferable and are propagated vegetatively.
Sterile living things as offspring from fertile living things happen all the time. Some survive because broken off bits grow on their own. Some plants get big and branches take root with the potential to be independent plants; grape vines are an obvious example. Some sterile offspring survive with human help as noted above. Some sterile offspring never do reproduce and given technology limits might never. That doesn't mean they didn't come into existence naturally.
You're just spouting off on subjects about which your knowledge is grossly inadequate. This is quite common among religious folk, who think "This is the way I want it, therefor God must have made it like this." Nonsense.