JOHN VC

A friend (lady) was asking me why women are more skeptical and harder to fool than men, and wondered if this was somehow adaptive.

You have no idea how subtle the ramifications are, that flow from the basic and stupidly simple premise of natural selection: that the genes that are most often reproduced will come to dominate the gene pool. So, Cave Guy has two options, both of which work for HIS genes: first, put a lot of effort into making sure his children survive, and second, put a lot of effort into making as many children as he can. Note that these are not necessarily the same thing. Thus, good husband and provider for Cave Lady and the Cave Kids for option 1, and sneak around and sweet talk all the loose Cave Gals you can find for option 2. Sound familiar?

Cave Lady’s options are simpler - keep Cave Guy happy, but also keep your eye on him, to ensure that he provides as much as possible to seeing that HER genes prosper. Thus the well developed lie detector. Cave Ladies who aren’t good at this will find fewer of their genes going on down the line, n’est-ce pas? On the other hand Cave Guys who just fool around and don’t bring the mastodon home are down to just the option 2, also not their best shot at perpetuity either. The fact that Modern Man still fools around when he can is good evidence that the two-option strategy was still working when human evolution was last heard from, so Modern Woman can’t relax just yet.

As for Cave Gal, if she can entice Cave Guy to stick around, her genes are in business, but if she winds up Miss Single Cave Mom that’s a setback for her DNA as well. Of course nothing entices Cave Guy like you know what (and remember, too, Cave Guys who are easily diverted from this objective don’t get to vote in next year’s gene pool), so Cave Gal had better be really good at it — but, if possible, with minimal risk of accidents, which are Not Adaptive until she snags him. Natural selection goes to work here as well — did you ever wonder why human females are ready for Freddy nearly all the time, while most other female animals, including most apes, only start breathing hard when they’re ovulating? Yep. Selected for.

By the way, the exception to the limited hours policy for female apes is the bonobo, or “pygmy chimpanzee” Pan paniscus, which are lovers not fighters - they use sex, like all the time, to work out social relationships. This species was only recently recognized as separate from the normal, decent, hard working chimps, and researchers are still chasing them around in the Congo jungle to work out the subtle details of “qui bono” so to speak. I suspect it will be a while, however, before American zoos will be putting a band of hard-partying bonobos on display, no matter how instructive that might be for school groups as to the origin of human survival tactics.