Hand on heart: what exactly would you give a long good sex? 20% of your income? 10 points of your IQ? Your spouse?
What stress leads itself nature only in order to come to sexual intercourse. Whales at the South pole for months, get his belly up until almost burst. Then they suddenly stop eating, sail to South Africa, and mate there, while not completely emaciated. And a year later it all starts again. It’s a bit like the old style of life Joschka Fischer.
When it comes to the possibility of intercourse, we do stupid things. To this day there is not a single drug that safely and without severe side effects would be suppressed sexual desire. Of course, it is also necessary to say that science deals with the study without much zeal.
Thus, from the point of view of the history of the Earth, sex is a relatively new invention. More than 2.5 billion years, nature got along without it. Well, a lot of worth from this. At least with regard to appearance. Such asexual organisms, like bacteria, is completely inert and very small. To sexuality can be treated as anyone, but for appearance it is clearly good.
A free market for genes!
But asexual reproduction is much more practical. Bacteria multiply by simple division. The fastest cope with a full division of about 20 minutes. So, with a good supply of nutrients, primitive Salmonella per day can produce up to 200 billion descendants, so among microbiologists it is also called “Julio Iglesias among microbes”.
The female aphid is also not necessarily need a sexual partner for breeding. They can give birth without a father, the offspring is female, the womb, the embryo can, in turn, carry another, even smaller embryo is female. So female aphids can give birth to both a daughter and granddaughter, which, in turn, are identical twins. It’s the relationships, as I have in the Odenwald.
No matter how simple, fast and effective nor it would be asexual reproduction, it has a significant drawback: the result is not particularly diverse. At each cell division the DNA of the original bacteria just reproduce. Almost the only chance that the genome of these cells will change, is mutation. Mean a small, random change in genetic material, which of course can have a big impact on evolution. For example, if a subsidiary of the mutated bacteria were hardier maternal bacteria this error when copying starts to dominate evolutionary that her descendants were able to survive in greater numbers.
But even if mutations in bacteria is very strong, asexual reproduction in the end, will only yield “more of the same”. A cloned single-celled organisms who think in the same direction. If they think at all. Since clones are primarily meant intellectual inaction.
Try one Monday morning to go to the Frankfurt airport. There you can observe the modern business clones in their natural environment: a 35 year-old heterosexual who play Golf, with a height of 1.8 meters business consultants in their grey suits with standard suitcases and bags for laptops, a swarm of flying to clients. Uniform as the army. Flexible as spruce plantation.
Perhaps this was the main reason that evolution is about 900 million years ago set free love — and suddenly there’s added dynamics! Although the process is much more time consuming than a purely cell division, sexual reproduction makes it possible to progress and innovation. As by mixing of different genetic material in the offspring is much large amplitude of genetic variation. Sex in some way is a free market for genes. So in a relatively short time, there is a variety of creatures: warthogs, Cocker spaniels, scorpionica — and business consultants.
The invention of sex has led to variety, flexibility and not least to unfathomable imagination. You can imagine that the first Dildo was invented about 30 thousand years ago? Thus, the Dildo is much older than the wheel. And I am sure that if this thing vibrated even then, the rims would not reached at all.
Vince Ebert is a chartered physicist and a comedian from Frankfurt. Every two weeks he writes for spektrum.de in his column, “Ebert extrapolate”.
