4/iii mmxv

During mating season, the testicles of some fruit bats become so swollen that flight becomes impossible.

In Spanish, the verb trasnochar means ‘to stay awake all night’.

The Atlantic Ocean is slightly saltier than the Pacific Ocean.

In the Arabic broadcast of The Simpsons episodes, Homer drinks soda instead of beer and eats Egyptian beef sausages instead of hot dogs.

In 2006, a Gallup poll revealed that 53 percent of Americans believe the entire cosmos was created six thousand years ago – interestingly, the Sumerians had invented glue one thousand earlier.

See other: Quite Interesting Facts

Assortative Mating‏

In human genetics, assortative mating‏ is a form of non-random mating in which pair bonds are established on the basis of phenotype i.e. observable characteristics, which is thought to underlie mate selection in a variety of animal species as well.

“I had a patient once who dreamed she kept her husband in the deep freeze except for mating. Lots of men feel that way.” – Robert Johnson

Two Coccinella Septempunctata, or Ladybirds mating

In human relations, the assortative mating‏ process may lead a person to choose a mate according to religious, cultural, or ethnic preferences, professional interests, or physical traits.

Positive assortative mating, or homogamy, exists when people choose to mate with persons similar to themselves; this type of selection is very common.

Negative assortative mating is the opposite case, when people avoid mating with persons similar to themselves.

“All nature’s creatures join to express nature’s purpose. Somewhere in their mounting and mating, rutting and butting is the very secret of nature itself.” – Graham Swift

Sexy Son Hypothesis‏

The sexy son hypothesis suggests that females obtain future fitness benefits from mating with polygynous males through the inheritance by their sons of traits contributing to mating success. It proposes that a female animal’s optimal choice among potential mates is a male whose genes will produce male offspring with the best chance of reproductive success.

What matters are her so-called sexy sons’ future breeding successes (like that of their promiscuous father) in creating large numbers of offspring carrying copies of the female’s genes.

Sexual selection by direct and/or indirect benefits as well as sexual conflict determines the evolution of animal mating systems. Female mating preferences are widely recognized as being responsible for the rapid and divergent evolution of male secondary sexual traits. In 1976, Richard Dawkins wrote in The Selfish Gene:

‘In a society where males compete with each other to be chosen as he-men by females, one of the best things a mother can do for her genes is to make a son who will turn out in his turn to be an attractive he-man. If she can ensure that her son is one of the fortunate few males who wins most of the copulations in the society when he grows up, she will have an enormous number of grandchildren. The result of this is that one of the most desirable qualities a male can have in the eyes of a female is, quite simply, sexual attractiveness itself.’

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