The Human Beast

There is a happy land in which obesity and heart disease are virtually unknown. That is the realm of subsistence humans who eat more than we do. Thanks to their active lifestyle hunter-gatherers are ideally lean, fit, and healthy (apart from ever-present animal attacks, parasites, and infections). How much exercise would we have to take to be as active as our foraging ancestors? Read More

American men and women are equal under the law. Yet, when they enter a marriage contract, it is the women who give up their names. Men almost never do. Read More

Like sex, violence is popular in entertainment. It boosts TV ratings, helps to sell household products, moves video games, and books, and garners the attention of young people when all else fails. Nature movies get in on the act as well, reveling in the gory details of predators dismembering their prey. But is nature as violent as most people, including biologists, imagine? Read More

In my last post, I pointed out that testosterone fuels the reckless sexual and aggressive behavior of young men and other male vertebrates. Recent research is closing in on sex hormones (androgens as well as estrogens) playing a very similar role for women.

The female hormone estradiol (a key estrogen) plays a role in dominance communication and physical aggression among primates. Read More