Sometimes, listening to all the science podcasts that I enjoy, little themes emerge. This week, a group of stories about the science of love were on several podcasts.
There was another theme that also showed up this week, which I didn't intend to talk about. These were stories about Charles Darwin, spurred on by the 200th anniversary of his birth. However, the passle of Darwin stories did include a love story. Darwin agonized over marrying because he knew his love was a woman of faith and his newly discovered theory of evolution could be seen as defying religion. He delayed publication of the theory for years for his wife's sake, and the loss of a daughter pulled them closer in a way that allowed him to publish his theories. His wife retained her faith while Darwin's faded, and they stayed deeply in love and produced several children. There are now some 70 great grandchildren of the couple, many being sought out from time to time to comment on the latest controversy over the battle between religion and evolution.
There were 3 different stories that seem somehow strangely similar that came out at about the same time, I heard them over my iPod all within a two day period.
One says that they discovered that the same hormone that bonds a parent to a child also bonds the parents together. I'm not sure how scientists figure things like this out, but we do know that many of our emotions are swayed or reinforced by (or result in) chemicals being produced by our endocrine system. In trying to figure out what those chemicals are, scientists are trying to understand and quantify what we always assumed was just something you experience. The story immediately made me question what happens if you don't have a stable mate, do you still have a strong bond with the child? Then I remembered a story that I heard about a month ago where this woman admitted to not really loving her oldest daughter very much. She had been in terrible fights and quarrels with the girl's father around the time the girl was born, and she admitted that the girl reminded her of her ex and she just really didn't care for the girl that much. A heartbreaking story, but also one that gives a possible scientific explanation for what she was saying. On the other hand, this news provides support for all the times when a woman wanted to have a baby to strengthen a faltering relationship. I imagine, when flooded by the hormones of bonding when the child came, that this probably actually works sometimes, as ridiculous and ill-advised as I've always considered the prospect. It also makes you wonder if you could concoct a love potion from the hormone?
The second story was about how vocal pitch changes during the fertile part of a woman's cycle, and studies show that men find women more attractive when listening to their voice during that time. They said that a woman's vocal pitch changes noticably when most fertile. This has obvious benefits from an evolutionary standpoint, making women more likely to attract a mate or cause a mate to initiate intimacy during a time when it's most productive. It also made me think about one of my favorite aspects of one of my favorite books. In Dune by Frank Herbert, the highly trained Bene Gesserit sisterhood used a form of vocal discipline called The Voice. Through manipulating their vocal qualities, they could invoke strong reactions in the people they were talking to. Besides making them attracted to the women, they also could stop their actions and sway their minds, but that's a different tenor of the idea. The recent research shows that Frank Herbert's fantasy idea actully has scientific merit.
The third story was the results of some scientific studies of the mating habits of spiders. One throwaway comment about the study was a mention that the spider spins a special web for mating, which reminds me of people decking out their apartments for a romantic evening, or birds making special nests to attract a mate. The shocking and strange part of the study was that some male spiders break off their male parts (they never said penis, so I'm wondering if it's not fair to equate this to a penis, but think of it instead as some kind of stinger-like appendage) during sex with the female. The scientific comment on this phenomenon was that this insures that the spider is the father of all the babies from that female, as the broken off appendage prevents the female from being fertilized by other males. You cannot help but anthropomorphize the story and imagine what would happen to a human male if this were the case. As I said, shocking! One of the stories (I heard this from more than one source) mentioned that the female often eats the male after the act is over. I'm sure there are many humans out there that can relate to this in a symbolic manner. We use the term "Man-Eater" and have the phrase "eat my heart out" so maybe we are harkening back to the love acts of our spider friends.
Happy Valentine's Day!
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