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    The Red Queen

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    Doris Georgia
    This book explores scientific findings about the nature and evolution of sex, using the metaphor of the Red Queen from Alice in Wonderland. It argues that sex evolved as a defense against parasites but now drives behaviors like mate selection. The book also suggests that human intelligence evolved primarily through sexual selection, allowing humans to attract mates through displays of wit and skill rather than just survival abilities. Written by science author Matt Ridley, The Red Queen was shortlisted for a prize for science books and looks at topics like why sex exists, mate choice, and implications for human sexual behavior and evolution.

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    The Red Queen

    Uploaded by

    Doris Georgia
    2K views2 pages
    This book explores scientific findings about the nature and evolution of sex, using the metaphor of the Red Queen from Alice in Wonderland. It argues that sex evolved as a defense against parasites but now drives behaviors like mate selection. The book also suggests that human intelligence evolved primarily through sexual selection, allowing humans to attract mates through displays of wit and skill rather than just survival abilities. Written by science author Matt Ridley, The Red Queen was shortlisted for a prize for science books and looks at topics like why sex exists, mate choice, and implications for human sexual behavior and evolution.

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    about The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature

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    This book explores scientific findings about the nature and evolution of sex, using the metaphor of the Red Queen from Alice in Wonderland. It argues that sex evolved as a defense against parasites but now drives behaviors like mate selection. The book also suggests that human intelligence evolved primarily through sexual selection, allowing humans to attract mates through displays of wit and skill rather than just survival abilities. Written by science author Matt Ridley, The Red Queen was shortlisted for a prize for science books and looks at topics like why sex exists, mate choice, and implications for human sexual behavior and evolution.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    2K views2 pages

    The Red Queen

    Uploaded by

    Doris Georgia
    This book explores scientific findings about the nature and evolution of sex, using the metaphor of the Red Queen from Alice in Wonderland. It argues that sex evolved as a defense against parasites but now drives behaviors like mate selection. The book also suggests that human intelligence evolved primarily through sexual selection, allowing humans to attract mates through displays of wit and skill rather than just survival abilities. Written by science author Matt Ridley, The Red Queen was shortlisted for a prize for science books and looks at topics like why sex exists, mate choice, and implications for human sexual behavior and evolution.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
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    The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature ()

    Sex is as fascinating to scientists as it is to the rest of us. A vast pool of


    knowledge, therefore, has been gleaned from research into the nature of sex,
    from the contentious problem of why the wasteful reproductive process exists at
    all, to how individuals choose their mates and what traits they find attractive.
    This fascinating book explores those findings, and their implications for the
    sexual behaviour of our own species. It uses the Red Queen from Alice in
    Wonderland who has to run at full speed to stay where she is as a metaphor
    for a whole range of sexual behaviours. The book was shortlisted for the 1994
    Rhone-Poulenc Prize for Science Books.
    Animals and plants evolved sex to fend off parasitic infection. Now look where
    it has got us. Men want BMWs, power and money in order to pair-bond with
    women who are blonde, youthful and narrow-waisted a brilliant examination
    of the scientific debates on the hows and whys of sex and evolution
    Independent.
    The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature is a popular science
    book by Matt Ridley exploring the evolutionary psychology of sexual selection.
    The Red Queen was one of seven books shortlisted for the 1994 Rhne-Poulenc
    Prize (now known as the Royal Society Prizes for Science Books), that was
    eventually won by Steve Jones' The Language of the Genes.
    Ridley argues that few, if any, aspects of human nature can be understood apart
    from sex, since human nature is a product of evolution, driven by sexual
    reproduction in the case of sexual selection in human evolution.
    The book begins with an evolutionary account of sex itself, defending the theory
    that sex flourishes, despite its energetic costs, primarily because a sexually
    mixed heritage confers to offspring a defensive "head start" against parasites
    received from and originally adapted to the maternal host environment.
    Toward the end of the book Ridley argues that human intelligence is largely a
    result of sexual selection. He argues that human intelligence far outstrips any
    survivalist demands that would have been placed on our hominid ancestors, and
    analogizes human intelligence to the peacock's tail, a trait widely believed to be
    the result of sexual selection. Human intelligence, he suggests, is used primarily
    to attract mates through prodigious displays of wit, charm, inventiveness, and

    individuality. This view of Intelligence is treated at length in Geoffrey Miller's


    The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature
    (2001).
    Matt Ridley, the author of The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human
    Nature, received his BA and D. Phil at Oxford researching the evolution of
    behaviour. He has been science editor, Washington correspondent and American
    editor of The Economist. He is the author of bestselling titles The Red Queen
    (1993), The Origins of Virtue (1996), Genome (1999) and Nature via Nurture
    (2003). His books have sold over half a million copies, been translated into 25
    languages and been shortlisted for six literary prizes. In 2004 he won the
    National Academies Book Award from the US National Academies of Science,
    Engineering and Medicine for Nature via Nurture. In 2007 Matt won the Davis
    Prize from the US History of Science Society for Francis Crick: Discoverer of
    the Genetic Code. He is married to the neuroscientist Professor Anya Hurlbert.

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