Sexual Risk: The Historic Tale of Sex and Reproduction

This erotic story excerpt by Jon Knowles from How Sex Got Screwed Up was originally published by Vernon Press and is reproduced with permission.

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Good sex story from How Sex Got Screwed Up by Jon Knowles

In the Beginning Was the Sex Drive 

(3,600,000,000 Years Ago – Today)  

Well, not quite in the beginning. The sex drive didn’t start to develop until more  than a billion years after the Big Bang formed the earth. The first inklings stirred  the oceans about three billion years ago. That’s when one-celled life forms  began to give each other their genes. Nestled up against one another, floating in  the briny deep, they managed to wiggle bits of protoplasm through each other’s  membranes. Totally microscopic, but that’s how sex was born.  

Until then, all living things reproduced without sex. Many still do. They split,  bud, throw spores, or break themselves into fragments to increase their  numbers. But they don’t fuse, and they don’t conjugate.1 Sex is now much  more complex than it was three billion years ago. It’s also much more fun —  even though it’s riskier.  

Of course, saying “no” to sex is still easy for lots of bacteria, yeast, fungi, algae,  and other plants.2 It’s easy for some fish and lizards, too.3 They are all sexless  clones.4 They can never say “yes.” Not much fun for them. That’s not all that’s  boring about reproduction without sex. The results are boring, too. You get  exactly the same thing, every time. Clone after clone after clone. There is one  great benefit, though — reproduction without sex is comparatively risk-free.  

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It’s a whole other story when two different cells mix it up to form a new one.  It couldn’t be less like cloning. There’s always something a little different in  the results. It spawns all kinds of genetic diversity. In fact, that’s how some germs develop their resistance to the drugs designed to do them in. They  form hundreds of new strains out of sheer sexual promiscuity.5 In this way, sex  is the spark plug for evolution. The more sexual reproduction, the faster  evolution moves.6 

But sex is also a high-risk activity. When sex leads to reproduction, genetic  change may also damage organisms and cause them to fail. And sex play has  other risks, too. Most school kids know that the female praying mantis leans  back and bites off her partner’s head while they have sex.7 Fewer know that  the male honey bee plugs his sperm inside the queen by detaching his penis,  and then he dies. Or that there’s a tiny male Canadian fly who makes an even  more gruesome sacrifice — he lets his mate pierce his head and suck up all of  his body fluids as they mate. By the time they’re done, he’s only an empty  husk hanging on to her genitals.8 

Some of the risks animals take to have sex are very dramatic. Female and male  salmon, for example, fling themselves against the rocks to get upstream to  spawn. As soon as they fulfill their reproductive chores, they die of exhaustion.9 The bowerbird makes arduous efforts to build a gaudy hut and courting ground  to attract his mate. To seduce her, he dances and sings, and sings and dances —  for days. But once he’s had sex with her, he beats her nearly to death.10 

Just imagine what would happen if the praying mantis, the honey bee, the  salmon, and the bowerbird understood the risks that they were taking in  order to mate. They might very quickly learn to say “No!” to sexual  reproduction and find other ways to amuse themselves. Such a strategy might  preserve their own lives, but it would be a deathblow to the survival of their  species.

That’s where the sex drive comes in. It blinds animals to the risks  they take when they have sex. It has to.  

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In the wild, the risks of sex play increase for animals that are lower in the food chain. Predators at the top, like lions, can take their time when they have  sex. They have little to risk. No one’s going to mess with them. If you’re the  lion’s favorite meal, however, it’s safer to get it over with as fast as you can.  That’s why antelope only risk a few seconds for their sexual pleasure — sometimes they even do it on the run!11 But they risk everything for those  fleeting few seconds.  

The consequences of sex play can be risky, too — especially when  reproduction occurs. Giving birth is the hallmark of warm-blooded creatures.  But it is a dangerous proposition for most animals. Not only might some  animal come along and eat you up while you’re trying to get through  pregnancy or labor or giving birth — giving birth, itself, might kill you.12 

It seems that the more likely an animal is to figure out the risks of having  sex, the more nature strengthens its sex drive. Perhaps that’s why the species  most capable of thought must have the most powerful sex drive. That’s where you and I come in.

We have a sex drive so strong that it seems purposely  designed to overcome our common sense. And it often does.13 

The human sex drive is more powerful than the social and religious efforts that have tried to curb it. That’s why these efforts almost always fail.

14 Compared to the mantis, salmon, and bowerbird, we humans seem crazed  with lust. We take all kinds of risks in order to have sex — even when the risk  is HIV, which can kill us. And unlike other organisms, we know exactly what  we’re doing when we take those risks.  

The human sex drive needs to be very powerful if we are to survive as a race.15

Despite modern medicine, reproductive risks for women are still much higher than for other female animals. One of the reasons is that the human brain is just too big for an easy birth. It barely fits through the birth canal.16

So why is it we  don’t use our big brains and stop taking risks to have sex?  

 

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If you enjoyed this, buy How Sex Got Screwed Up: The Ghosts that Haunt Our Sexual Pleasure – Book One: From the Stone Age to the Enlightenment and Book Two: From Victoria to Our Own Times by Jon Knowles, published by Vernon Press.  Find out more about Jon from his site, his The Good Bits Profile or follow him on Twitter.

1 Maxwell, 1994, 3–16, 33–7.  

2 Harkavy, 1991, 915.  

3 Zimbardo, 1992, 400.  

4 And some are hermaphroditic. They have both female and male sexes. Some have  them at the same time. Some have them at different parts of their lives. All sea basses,  for instance, lay eggs. Thirty seconds later, they fertilize them. A female reef gobie can  become the dominant male when he dies. She can become female again if a bigger  alpha male comes along (Callahan, 2009,110–3). 

5 Maxwell, 1994, 33–5, 38–40, 47.  

6 Eckholm, 1986.  

7 Achenbach, 1990.  

8 Sivinski, 1992, 34.  

9 Maxwell, 1994, 74–5; Maxwell, 1995, 36.  

10 Griffin, 1992, 80–82.