Man: Why do I love? Why do I want to be loved?....WHAT IS LOVE?God: The punishment for wanting to walk on two legs and not on your fours like every other creature.
Man: [&^%&**$%^&] What the......???!!!
God: lol
Man: [&^%&**$%^&] What the......???!!!
God: lol
Love is, quintessentially, the reason why humans bond and form a pair. Would love had existed if there had not been a tendency among humans to form a sexual couple? Or am I jumbling the the cause and effect relationship here - is love the cause or the effect? Most romantics might say humans are capable of love and hence they form pairs but the actual truth is the opposite. We have an evolutionary tendency (and necessity) to form pairs and hence love exists among human beings.
Mating for life (or marriage...so to speak) is not just limited to human beings. Gibbon apes, wolves, termites, coyotes, barn owls, beavers, bald eagles, golden eagles, condors, swans, brolga cranes, French angel fish, sandhill cranes, pigeons, prions , red-tailed hawks, anglerfish, ospreys, prairie voles, and black vultures are all known to mate for life and just like humans, are adulterous too. Of the billion species, why do so few show this tendency? Even our closest relatives - gorillas/chimps/orangutans dont share this mating-for-life business. Why do we? The answer lies in the evolution of the species. Every species have evolved in a different way, adapting to different circumstances and environment. Let us just focus on humans. When humans seperated from the ape lineage, we became bipeds from knuckle-walkers. But not without a price to pay, and what a price we paid!
Ever wondered why human female labour (delivery pains) is so troublesome? Every female I know dreads the time she has to deliver her kid. For all the other creatures, this is a very (comparitively)simple process. Talking of mammals, Discovery channel keeps showing deers, rhinos, elephants etc giving birth to calfs with the utmost ease. The whole process takes few minutes and the mother doesn't seem to be in any (visible)pain. And the calf starts running just after few minutes of being delivered. Whereas human babies take, may be, not sure, 2 years to just walk. Why is this difference so huge? - delivery is painful, the baby needs so much care for so many years to come. And more importantly, what the eff has this got to do with love?
Evolution answers it. To become bipeds, our pelvic bones had to become stronger than ever to support the large upper bodies of humans (a task that would have been much simpler had we remained a species that walks on all fours). For the pelvis to become strong, the bone had to become large. Women were at a disadvantage; for they have the responsibility of delivering a baby. During childbirth, the baby passes through the hole in pelvis. If the pelvic bone became larger, the hole would become smaller. A smaller hole means the baby had to be delivered when it was still tiny. Over generations, the pelvic bone, in females, reached a critical point where the hole in the pelvis became small/big enough for a 9 month old baby to pass. The hole is small compared to other species and hence all the complications and pains in human birth. This is the price that females had to pay. My dear readers, you are mistaken if you think only females had to pay a price.
Every man dreams of multiple partners but we are largely a monogamous species. We fall in love, and stay loyal to our mate (atleast during the initial years). As I said before, giving birth to a tiny baby is crucial to reduce any complications. The newborn baby, apart from being tiny, is hapless and needs all the care in the world. It cannot talk, walk or do anything on its own. Tending for such a hapless little thing is a gigantic struggle, a single mother would always find it extremely difficult to do it on her own. The females needs help in rearing the child till it can support itself. Needless to say, the baby has a better rate of survival if the parents are together. Now, every species in this world evolves in a way that its genes are preserved and are passed well into the next generation. The goal of evolution is the safety of genes or in other words safety of the offspring. In order for the baby to survive, it is essential for the parents to stay together, share a bond. And there in lies the roots of love - humans evolved to form a sexual couple and the body evolved to generate the chemistry of love to felicitate this bond. So from being polygamous apes, we became monogamous humans. Fate, darn! Feeling incredulous? Better believe it.
PS: What I have written is not the brainchild of my genius. I've only written what I have read. If you are interested in reading more about evolution and love, read this wonderful book by Matt Ridley - The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature.
Next part: Beauty or Brains?
Photo Courtesy: http://media.photobucket.com/image/love%20heart/nurnadrah/love-heart-cloud.jpg
Mating for life (or marriage...so to speak) is not just limited to human beings. Gibbon apes, wolves, termites, coyotes, barn owls, beavers, bald eagles, golden eagles, condors, swans, brolga cranes, French angel fish, sandhill cranes, pigeons, prions , red-tailed hawks, anglerfish, ospreys, prairie voles, and black vultures are all known to mate for life and just like humans, are adulterous too. Of the billion species, why do so few show this tendency? Even our closest relatives - gorillas/chimps/orangutans dont share this mating-for-life business. Why do we? The answer lies in the evolution of the species. Every species have evolved in a different way, adapting to different circumstances and environment. Let us just focus on humans. When humans seperated from the ape lineage, we became bipeds from knuckle-walkers. But not without a price to pay, and what a price we paid!
Ever wondered why human female labour (delivery pains) is so troublesome? Every female I know dreads the time she has to deliver her kid. For all the other creatures, this is a very (comparitively)simple process. Talking of mammals, Discovery channel keeps showing deers, rhinos, elephants etc giving birth to calfs with the utmost ease. The whole process takes few minutes and the mother doesn't seem to be in any (visible)pain. And the calf starts running just after few minutes of being delivered. Whereas human babies take, may be, not sure, 2 years to just walk. Why is this difference so huge? - delivery is painful, the baby needs so much care for so many years to come. And more importantly, what the eff has this got to do with love?
Evolution answers it. To become bipeds, our pelvic bones had to become stronger than ever to support the large upper bodies of humans (a task that would have been much simpler had we remained a species that walks on all fours). For the pelvis to become strong, the bone had to become large. Women were at a disadvantage; for they have the responsibility of delivering a baby. During childbirth, the baby passes through the hole in pelvis. If the pelvic bone became larger, the hole would become smaller. A smaller hole means the baby had to be delivered when it was still tiny. Over generations, the pelvic bone, in females, reached a critical point where the hole in the pelvis became small/big enough for a 9 month old baby to pass. The hole is small compared to other species and hence all the complications and pains in human birth. This is the price that females had to pay. My dear readers, you are mistaken if you think only females had to pay a price.
Every man dreams of multiple partners but we are largely a monogamous species. We fall in love, and stay loyal to our mate (atleast during the initial years). As I said before, giving birth to a tiny baby is crucial to reduce any complications. The newborn baby, apart from being tiny, is hapless and needs all the care in the world. It cannot talk, walk or do anything on its own. Tending for such a hapless little thing is a gigantic struggle, a single mother would always find it extremely difficult to do it on her own. The females needs help in rearing the child till it can support itself. Needless to say, the baby has a better rate of survival if the parents are together. Now, every species in this world evolves in a way that its genes are preserved and are passed well into the next generation. The goal of evolution is the safety of genes or in other words safety of the offspring. In order for the baby to survive, it is essential for the parents to stay together, share a bond. And there in lies the roots of love - humans evolved to form a sexual couple and the body evolved to generate the chemistry of love to felicitate this bond. So from being polygamous apes, we became monogamous humans. Fate, darn! Feeling incredulous? Better believe it.
PS: What I have written is not the brainchild of my genius. I've only written what I have read. If you are interested in reading more about evolution and love, read this wonderful book by Matt Ridley - The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature.
Next part: Beauty or Brains?
Photo Courtesy: http://media.photobucket.com/image/love%20heart/nurnadrah/love-heart-cloud.jpg
3 comments:
Long awaited was this one. Looks like turbulence caused by matt ridley in your mind, finally settled over and crystallized into this :).
Nice one.
Pelvis bones ,hole size...humans still don't care to put down the population...at least Evolution/GOD thought human (or the most dominant species' ) population can be controlled by making the hole smaller...I like this analysis of your I think we should launch a forum on this (would be a big hit as philosophical-evolutionary topic)
@sriranjan
the purpose of any species is to reproduce. neither god nor evolution will ever do anything that would hinder it. And the topic is not at all philosophical :)
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