If You're Curious About These Questions...
You should listen to this audiobook
- Have you ever wondered why humans are one of the only species on Earth to have sex for pleasure and social bonding rather than just for reproduction?
- Did you know that our unique—and often strange—sexual behaviors might be the secret key to how we ascended to the top of the food chain?
- Are you curious about the evolutionary logic behind human traits like menopause and concealed ovulation that set us apart from the rest of the animal kingdom?
Listen to Why is Sex Fun? — Free Audiobook
Key Takeaways from Why is Sex Fun?
- Discover why human sexual habits, such as mating in private or having sex during pregnancy, are actually evolutionary anomalies compared to the rest of the animal kingdom.
- Understand the evolutionary origins of human monogamy, which developed as a mutual survival strategy to protect and nurture our highly dependent offspring.
- Learn how concealed ovulation in human females led to our unique habit of recreational mating, an evolutionary trick designed to keep males invested in a single partner.
- Find out why human fathers choose to sacrifice their ability to endlessly spread their genes in order to stay with their families and ensure their children survive.
- Explore how the prolonged helplessness of human infants compelled early men to abandon the typical mammalian behavior of leaving after copulation in order to become active providers.
Why is Sex Fun? — Full Chapter Overview
Chapter 1: Recommendation
Chapter 2: Human beings have the strangest sex lives of all animals.
Chapter 3: Human monogamy exists to help protect our children.
Chapter 4: Recreational sex might seem pointless, but it helped monogamy to arise.
Chapter 5: Men’s role in the family is often motivated by sexual rewards.
Chapter 6: Men don’t breastfeed their babies, even though they could!
Chapter 7: Menopause is one of the strangest aspects of human sexuality.
Chapter 8: Bodily cues serve as advertisements to possible partners.
Why is Sex Fun? Summary & Overview
Everybody thinks about sex. However, we seldom consider the extent to which human sexuality differs from the reproductive habits of other species. In Why is Sex Fun? (1998), Jared Diamond presents an exploration of humans’ sexual history, and explains how our unusual sexual behavior might be the reason we ascended to the top of the food chain.
This is a Blinkist staff pick
“This curious look into human sexual behaviors is a great read for anyone wanting to gain a deeper understanding of, for example, why we can flip from hot under the collar to “not tonight, honey,” in a flash.”
– Julian, Customer Support
Who Should Listen to Why is Sex Fun??
- Anyone wondering about the differences between animal and human sexuality
- Anyone curious about our sexual evolution
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