Slashdot Mirror
Lack of Penis Bone In Humans Linked To Monogamous Relationships and Quick Sex, Study Says (theguardian.com)
The penis bone can be as long as a finger in a monkey and two feet long in a walrus, but the human male has lost it completely. According to a new report published in Proceedings of the Royal Society, the lack of a penis bone in human males may be a consequence of monogamy and quick sex. The Guardian reports: Known as the baculum to scientists with an interest, the penis bone is a marvel of evolution. It pops up in mammals and primates around the world, but varies so much in terms of length and whether it is present at all, that it is described as the most diverse bone ever to exist. Prompted by the extraordinary differences in penis bone length found in the animal kingdom, scientists set out to reconstruct the evolutionary story of the baculum, by tracing its appearance in mammals and primates throughout history. They found that the penis bone evolved in mammals more than 95 million years ago and was present in the first primates that emerged about 50 million years ago. From that moment on, the baculum became larger in some animals and smaller in others. Kit Opie who ran the study with Matilda Brindle at University College London, said that penis bone length was longer in males that engaged in what he called "prolonged intromission." In plain English, that means that the act of penetration lasts for more than three minutes, a strategy that helps the male impregnate the female while keeping her away from competing males. The penis bone, which attaches at the tip of the penis rather than the base, provides structural support for male animals that engage in prolonged intromission. Humans may have lost their penis bones when monogamy emerged as the dominant reproductive strategy during the time of Homo erectus about 1.9 million years ago, the scientists believe. In monogamous relationships, the male does not need to spend a long time penetrating the female, because she is not likely to be leapt upon by other amorous males. That, at least, is the theory.
Morality and Monogamy have pretty much gone by the wayside. The divorce rate tends to speak volumes as well.
Why is it moral to force people to stay together after they no longer want to? There's no virtue in misery.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Given the popularity of cheating by members of either sex, I'd say the penis bone isn't the only thing we've lost. Morality and Monogamy have pretty much gone by the wayside. The divorce rate tends to speak volumes as well.
Blah blah blah, yeah things are so much worse than the days when being raped was considered utterly shameful by mainstream society and being moral meant opposing things like miscegenation or smacking your wife a bit if she got a bit too uppity.
This is why the more reactionary and religious flavors of conservatism have fallen by the wayside in favor of guys like Trump or Farage. I'm not on board with the self-flagellating left, and if you want to argue that society needs improving you'll get very little argument from most reasonable people of the left or right, but there is no golden age of morality in America that's significantly better than what we have now.
I think it's a different selector.
Think about the biggest 'disadvantage' of having a squishy penis: Men under stress don't get a hard-on and thus can't reproduce. This could've emphasized and benefited populations with lesser stress and more room to develop higher skillsets to surpass a potential human branch with real boner.
It could also be for 'economic' reasons. Humans are built and optimised towards long-distance running. No other animal can sweat like we do. A bushman (or any other non-obese halfway trained human) can run an antelope to 'death by bodyheat and/or exhaustion'. That is a pretty awesome raw survival skill innate to homo sapiens. I suspect lugging a bone penis dangling between your awesome running legs might actually be quite cumbersome - since it's mostly men doing the running and the ladies nourishing big-headed babies (that need special attendance and culture as extended brain + serious actual brain nutrition) after laboriously squeezing them out of a notably narrow birth canal.
Also we only need our penis once in a while. Having a lightweight retractable one is generally quite practical from an evolutionary perspective. Also I suspect the squishiness prevents injuries and infections better than a true boner would. Wales float. They don't have to worry about their boner bumping and scraping on the ground or on rocks.
Bottom line:
You needn't go to far to get a handle on what's up with the squishy penis - the answer is probably quite simple.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Your weakness makes me sick.
His weakness? What about yours? You're the one crying about man-bashing, a war against masculinity and left-marxist thinking (whatever that may be). You radiate insecurity that you try to blame on others, and apparently found it necessary to vote for racism and misogyny so you can feel important again. The sickening weakness here is yours.
Morality and monogamy are both in decline.
So when was this golden age when people were more moral than they are today? Can you point to any actual evidence that morality is in decline? Crime and violence are at all-time lows, so by that measure we are getting more moral.
And you sit here and dissect all this, and then try and claim that morality is somehow not in decline, or ask for proof.
That is correct. I don't believe morality is in decline.
Your entire answer is the proof in defending immoral actions
Except the actions I defend aren't immoral.
It's literally become socially acceptable, as you've clearly pointed out the infectious mentality has spread.
There's nothing immoral with having kids out of wedlock. Being married doesn't guarantee a stable home life for the kids and neither does being unmarried preclude it.
Oh look, another app that helps me get laid, complete with GPS-enabled pussy radar.
You are presupposing that there is something immoral about having sex. I don't see why.
The entire concept of marriage is built around a religious construct that champions and fosters a moral code of ethics between two people who love each other.
There was perhaps a period of 200 years where that was the case for a reasonable fraction of people. But even then people got married for all sorts of reasons, sometimes for love, sometimes for strategy, sometimes because they wanted to bang, sometimes because they already did and didn't have effective contraception. Before 1753, marriage in England wasn't even de-facto religious. Rich people got married in Church, poor people didn't.
Marriage has cropped up all over the world in all sorts of cultures with enormous variety.
So, basically cherry picking here.
And you ask why immorality is bad
No, I'm asking why you think these actions are immoral. Immorality is bad by definition. What I don't see is how puritanical Christian ideals are synonymous with morality.
abusive step-parents
Because real parents can never be abusive. True story.
SJW n. One who posts facts.