Why do women have full time breasts? (A biology thread)

edbermac

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Thu May-24-07 02:24 PM
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Why do women have full time breasts? (A biology thread)

From MSNBC website, a question I've often pondered. :think:

Why do women orgasm? Why do they have prominent breasts even when they aren�t nursing a baby? Why can�t people tell when a woman is ovulating? Why would anybody even ask these questions? Most people don�t, but evolutionary psychologists, biologists and anthropologists make a living doing so, and the possible answers give us some interesting clues to why we have sex the way we do today.

Men just don't seem to have the same number of unanswered questions about our biology. Male primates � male mammals in general � all have penises and testicles and sperm. We use them whenever we can. Unless we are sick or injured, we can make babies. And if anybody wants to know if we're interested, all they have to do is look to see if we're at attention. Science seems to know why men work the way we do, which is pretty much the way other male primates work. The sexual biology of human females, though, can be puzzling.

David P. Barash, a University of Washington psychology professor who is writing a book about such �evolutionary enigmas,� gave a presentation to the annual meeting of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists in San Diego earlier this month. Afterward, I asked him to follow up with Sexploration and invited other experts to weigh in. Though nobody claims to have the right answers about some of these top female mysteries, they do seem to have fun thinking about them.

.....

It was once thought that women have orgasms so the muscle contractions could shepherd sperm toward the cervix, what Barash calls, alarmingly, �the uterine suck-up theory.� But this has been more or less proven false. Shlain believes orgasm is a reward to women, a little something to entice them to have sex rather than focus on the prospect of death in childbirth. �Once she knows death is associated with sex, she needs to have an impetus to keep having her do it,� he says.

�Women have orgasms because men do,� insists Katherine Dettwyler, an anthropologist and colleague of Rosenberg�s. �The clitoris is the homologue of the head of the penis. I think orgasms are a reward to men to as much as possible and also the muscles contracting shoot ejaculate out and so it gets as far it can. Women have a clitoris because that�s what�s left of the head of the penis, like men have nipples.� Rosenberg agrees, calling female orgasm an evolutionary �side effect.�

But Barash says he is �unimpressed with that notion. Male nipples are trivial; they are laughable. Female orgasm is a definite phenomenon, more Technicolor as opposed to male orgasm. It is hard to believe it is a mere byproduct when women are capable of multiple orgasms that would make any man jealous.�

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18039615/