Livescience has another great article about how men pay the ultimate price to attract women.

In common chimpanzees, Kruger and his colleague Randolph Nesse report, mortality spikes among males around age 13, just as they’re old enough to breed and start competing for social status.

Males of many species must fight vigorously for the right to mate. Think of rams butting heads. Spectacular male bird plumage is another example of biological effort required to succeed, effort that uses energy and can shorten a life.

Human males don’t always have to wrestle to get a woman these days, but the pressure to succeed sexually hasn’t changed much, the researchers argue. Only the methods have been revised.

In caveman days, being good with a club was one way to get a mate. Now, the ability to purchase a blinged-out SUV has similar value, the scientists suggest.

“Men compete for resources and social status, which are criteria men are valued for in mate selection,” Kruger told LiveScience.

This idea is reinforced by data that show low social status has a greater impact on male mortality rates than on those of women: Men of lower status or who lack a mate are more likely to engage in a riskier pattern of behaviors, Kruger said.

It’s always interesting to see how even though we’ve far advanced technologically and socially, our old biological ties remain just as thick as they were in the primitive ages. Women still long to create and nurture a family unit. Men are still just as competitive in trying to attract a mate.

Men have a biological need to perpetuate their genes. Being aggresive creatures, this can lead to that race becoming violent. Sit back a few nights a week and watch the bar scene - you’ll see the same behavoir. Men stalking their prey as they walk through the door, waiting for the perfect opportunity, and then striking. Time and time again, they’ll come down to this water hole hoping for the easy prey.

Men do it for the sex. Women do it for the attention.

Sit back and watch a club night go down. The men aren’t there to dance, or at least very few of them are. Instead, they’re there to dance with women, to buy drinks for women, in hopes that they can ascertain a spot in their pants. Likewise, the women are there for the energy and for the attention. While it may seem primitive to some, in the end, it’s all about us repeating the perfect circle our biology has trapped us in.

After all, if this wasn’t so pervasive and so embedded in cultures throughout the world, would we all still know “what he means” when Chris Cagle says he did it… “‘Cause The Chicks Dig It”?

Tags: men, sex, biology, women