Valentine’s Day special / Gorillas in the midst (of a tryst) - February 14, 2008
For yet another year the 14th of February has followed the 13th. And for yet another year a whole host of people have produced Valentine’s Day themed science stories.
Nature has a special report for your delectation:
In the first Matt Kaplan has been investigating the science of speed dating (article, podcast).
This features the researchers over at Northwestern University who have been looking at what men and women want in a partner. It has been assumed that men go for looks and women money (at least by whoever wrote this press release). But this isn’t backed up by new research which found good looks were the “primary stimulus of attraction for both men and women”, and both sexes also like “a person with good earning prospects”.
Also on Nature: apes have been discovered expressing their love in a very human way. “Understanding the behaviour of our cousins, the great apes, sheds light on the evolution of behavioural traits in our own species and our ancestors,” says researcher Thomas Breuer in the press release.
More below the fold...
Meanwhile, at UCLA, Gian Gonzaga has found that being in love makes pretty people not so pretty, to the person in love at least. “Feeling love for your romantic partner appears to make everybody else less attractive, and the emotion appears to work in very specific ways by in enabling you to push thoughts of that tempting other out of your mind,” says Gian Gonzaga (press release).
Of course this give a convenient get out to the unfaithful: “No! I wasn’t checking out that girl/boy my darling, I was merely making sure that I still love you.”
In space astronaut Stanley Love that warned his wife and children “may be feeling there’s one fewer Love on Earth this Valentine’s Day” (AP).
Over half of Canadians believe in love at first sight (The Canadian Press).
Newsday looks at a professor who is ‘serious on the science of love’.
Image: Gorillas: get a room / Thomas Breuer – WCS/MPI-EVA
