Caution: Taboos! Of course, science can not and should not resist to investigate and examine societal taboos!
Some of the language here seems bombastic!
It maybe healthy and good for fitness for various reasons!
Did you know that male masturbation in the wild is easier to observe than female masturbation?
"Though masturbation is common across the animal kingdom, it seems, at its face, to be an evolutionary paradox: Why would an animal waste time, energy and reproductive resources on self-pleasure instead of copulating with a partner? ...
A new study ... suggests that the evolutionary history of masturbation in primates extends back at least 40 million years, and the behavior might indeed help male primates be ready to mate when they get the chance, and also stay free of disease. ...
To fill gaps in the data due to masturbation not always being easy to observe (or looked for at all) by biologists, [paper researchers] sent out questionnaires to researchers to ask about their observations of primate masturbation that weren’t reported in the literature. This was especially important for information on female masturbation, ... which tends to go unnoticed ...
Male Cape ground squirrels (Geosciurus inauris), for instance, are known to masturbate after sex to cleanse their systems of infectious agents. ..."
A new study ... suggests that the evolutionary history of masturbation in primates extends back at least 40 million years, and the behavior might indeed help male primates be ready to mate when they get the chance, and also stay free of disease. ...
To fill gaps in the data due to masturbation not always being easy to observe (or looked for at all) by biologists, [paper researchers] sent out questionnaires to researchers to ask about their observations of primate masturbation that weren’t reported in the literature. This was especially important for information on female masturbation, ... which tends to go unnoticed ...
Male Cape ground squirrels (Geosciurus inauris), for instance, are known to masturbate after sex to cleanse their systems of infectious agents. ..."
From the abstract:
"Masturbation occurs throughout the animal kingdom. At first glance, however, the fitness benefits of this self-directed behaviour are unclear. Regardless, several drivers have been proposed. Non-functional hypotheses posit that masturbation is either a pathology, or a byproduct of high underlying sexual arousal, whereas functional hypotheses argue an adaptive benefit. The Postcopulatory Selection Hypothesis states that masturbation aids the chances of fertilization, while the Pathogen Avoidance Hypothesis states that masturbation helps reduce host infection by flushing pathogens from the genital tract. Here, we present comprehensive new data documenting masturbation across the primate order and use these, in conjunction with phylogenetic comparative methods, to reconstruct the evolutionary pathways and correlates of masturbation. We find that masturbation is an ancient trait within the primate order, becoming a more common aspect of the haplorrhine behavioural repertoire after the split from tarsiers. Our analyses provide support for both the Postcopulatory Selection and Pathogen Avoidance Hypotheses in male primates, suggesting that masturbation may be an adaptive trait, functioning at a macroevolutionary scale."
The evolution of masturbation is associated with postcopulatory selection and pathogen avoidance in primates (open access)
The researchers avoided to use color for their figures in their paper! See example below. 😊
Figure 4. Coevolution between masturbation occurrence (present versus absent; left-hand side of circles in schematic) and pathogens (present versus absent; right-hand side of circles in schematic).
No comments:
Post a Comment