Are you sure she is carrying your baby?
Feb 24, 2006
<br>There are some amazing and hard-to-believe statistics about how many children born to married couples or long-term relationships are not fathered by the woman’s partner, but by another man.
There are some amazing and hard-to-believe statistics about how many children born to married couples or long-term relationships are not fathered by the woman’s partner, but by another man.
According to the ww.childsupportanalysis.co.uk (see illustration right) seems hard to believe because we have always been told that men are more likely to be unfaithful to their partners than women. These figures do not seem to bear that out, although we do not know how they compare with unfaithfulness in childless couples, or even if the women were so desperate to get pregnant that they chose to be unfaithful for that reason alone.
Anyhow, it is clear that something strange is going on. It is easier to understand what this might be if you take a sociobiological view. Simply put, this means that you shift from seeing everyone as driven by social conventions (like “don’t commit adulteryâ€) and instead think about which biological imperatives might lie behind their behaviour.
Then, the natural instinct theory comes in. Then of course, it all becomes much simpler: women are subconsciously looking for the best man (the fittest, healthiest, richest, most socially successful male), while men are looking to inseminate as many women as possible and get as many pregnant as possible. In biological terms, the only winners in the race to reproduce are the males and females of any species who leave most offspring in the next generation.
For males, one aspect of this strategy is to inseminate many women, and to con the woman’s mate into bringing up the children. For women, seeking out a successful male’s sperm may be a riskier strategy if she is dependent on her cuckolded mate to support her and her offspring, for he may leave her if he discovers the deception.
Now, all this happens all the time in the animal kingdom, but it is unusual to think of ourselves as so driven by our animal nature that sex becomes nothing more than the expression of our deepest animal instincts. Sadly, though, that often seems to be the case. Robin Baker has written a book called Sperm Wars in which he entertainingly explains that the human penis was designed to “enable males to substitute the semen of their competitors with their semen. As a consequence of competition for paternity, human males evolved penises that displace semen from the female vagina left by other males.†His research is published in the journal Evolution and Human Behaviour.
Some fascinating evidence which may support the concept of sperm wars comes from research done by a team of scientists in the USA. These sex-boffins built an artificial vagina and a variety of plastic penises, then experimented with starch suspension to represent semen. And guess what? They discovered that the shape of the penis is exactly right for removing any semen that already happens to be in the vagina when a man has sex. They discovered that the coronal ridge of the penis could scoop out more than 90% of the starch mixture in one of their artificial vaginas with just one thrust. A penis with no coronal ridge only managed to remove 35%. And the vigour of thrusting mattered too: a deeper thrust scooped out more of the offending starchy stuff.
You may say that just happens to be a matter of chance. After all, some other scientists have suggested the shape of the penis is designed to keep a woman’s lubrication inside her vagina during sex. (Though of course, those two ideas are not necessarily mutually exclusive). Here is another interesting fact that may support the idea of semen clearance: a couple’s sex tends to be more energetic if a woman is suspected of cheating or if the couple has been apart. This might imply there is a sub-conscious desire on the part of the man to rid his partner of any trace of another man’s semen. Of course, it might just mean he is hot because he has not had sex for a while.
Additional reporting by
Dr Herbert Mugarura
According to the ww.childsupportanalysis.co.uk (see illustration right) seems hard to believe because we have always been told that men are more likely to be unfaithful to their partners than women. These figures do not seem to bear that out, although we do not know how they compare with unfaithfulness in childless couples, or even if the women were so desperate to get pregnant that they chose to be unfaithful for that reason alone.
Anyhow, it is clear that something strange is going on. It is easier to understand what this might be if you take a sociobiological view. Simply put, this means that you shift from seeing everyone as driven by social conventions (like “don’t commit adulteryâ€) and instead think about which biological imperatives might lie behind their behaviour.
Then, the natural instinct theory comes in. Then of course, it all becomes much simpler: women are subconsciously looking for the best man (the fittest, healthiest, richest, most socially successful male), while men are looking to inseminate as many women as possible and get as many pregnant as possible. In biological terms, the only winners in the race to reproduce are the males and females of any species who leave most offspring in the next generation.
For males, one aspect of this strategy is to inseminate many women, and to con the woman’s mate into bringing up the children. For women, seeking out a successful male’s sperm may be a riskier strategy if she is dependent on her cuckolded mate to support her and her offspring, for he may leave her if he discovers the deception.
Now, all this happens all the time in the animal kingdom, but it is unusual to think of ourselves as so driven by our animal nature that sex becomes nothing more than the expression of our deepest animal instincts. Sadly, though, that often seems to be the case. Robin Baker has written a book called Sperm Wars in which he entertainingly explains that the human penis was designed to “enable males to substitute the semen of their competitors with their semen. As a consequence of competition for paternity, human males evolved penises that displace semen from the female vagina left by other males.†His research is published in the journal Evolution and Human Behaviour.
Some fascinating evidence which may support the concept of sperm wars comes from research done by a team of scientists in the USA. These sex-boffins built an artificial vagina and a variety of plastic penises, then experimented with starch suspension to represent semen. And guess what? They discovered that the shape of the penis is exactly right for removing any semen that already happens to be in the vagina when a man has sex. They discovered that the coronal ridge of the penis could scoop out more than 90% of the starch mixture in one of their artificial vaginas with just one thrust. A penis with no coronal ridge only managed to remove 35%. And the vigour of thrusting mattered too: a deeper thrust scooped out more of the offending starchy stuff.
You may say that just happens to be a matter of chance. After all, some other scientists have suggested the shape of the penis is designed to keep a woman’s lubrication inside her vagina during sex. (Though of course, those two ideas are not necessarily mutually exclusive). Here is another interesting fact that may support the idea of semen clearance: a couple’s sex tends to be more energetic if a woman is suspected of cheating or if the couple has been apart. This might imply there is a sub-conscious desire on the part of the man to rid his partner of any trace of another man’s semen. Of course, it might just mean he is hot because he has not had sex for a while.
Additional reporting by
Dr Herbert Mugarura