Avoiding your dad's call? Hanging up faster? Hiding in your room until menopause? It's because you don't want to have a baby with dear old dad. Which, while disturbing, is really better than the alternative. While ovulation may be a good time to schedule a first date, it's a bad time to hang out with your father, at least according to your mating instincts. A new study looked at women's phone Read more

Next time you spend Saturday night home alone you can seek comfort not in chocolate but in knowing you're not alone. Millions of people around the world are in the same position, home alone on a Saturday night because they "don't possess the qualities that members of the opposite sex seek in potential mates." That's Dr. Satoshi Kanazawa's theory. The evolutionary psychologist is famous for his Read more

Laughing too hard is my favorite reason to cry. A wedding might be my second favorite tearful occasion. And like most everyone else, I've also cried when stressed, sad, or in pain. Humans have plenty of causes to cry, but we're the only species that sheds tears for emotional reasons. This has prompted psychologists to look into evolutionary explanations for why we cry. They found that crying Read more

If speed ain't your thing, don't worry — humans aren't really built to go fast. As we evolved and moved out of the trees, humans began to walk upright with obvious benefits to "hands-free" locomotion — look how far we've come. But one major drawback about becoming bi-pedal: it slowed us down. A recent article on the subject on NPR explains that "in a tiger-eat-monkey world, two legs were Read more

Anxiety may take its toll on the body, but it could make you the first one off the boat in a crisis. A recent study found evolution has divided people's attachment styles down the middle — half are emotionally secure and the other half are emotionally insecure — for a reason. People with secure attachment styles worry less and view the world as a safe place; while the insecurely attached are Read more

Dance can be taught, but it can't always be learned. When it comes to rhythm and grace, most either have it or they don't. I've never thought much about why, but I imagine it's an arbitrary genetic trait like rolling your tongue or wiggling your ears. Turns out I am right-ish. Scientists know that dancing used to be a matter of survival. A 2006 study in the Public Library of Science’s genetics Read more

A new book, Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human, argues that hot food, and not sex, is the reason human beings originally paired up in domestic relationships. According to author and Harvard anthropologist Richard Wrangham, early marriages were really a trade off for hot food (prepared by the women) and protection (provided by the men). Evidence from primitive societies, including the fact Read more

A cadre of scientists has determined that evolution is driving women to become more beautiful while "men remain as aesthetically unappealing as their caveman ancestors." Scientists claim that attractive couples (based on ”objective assessments of physical attractiveness”) tend to have more children and those children are more likely to be female. Those adult daughters may marry and mate with Read more