The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature ()

Sex is as fascinating to scientists as it is to the rest of us. A vast pool of

knowledge, therefore, has been gleaned from research into the nature of sex,
from the contentious problem of why the wasteful reproductive process exists at
all, to how individuals choose their mates and what traits they find attractive.
This fascinating book explores those findings, and their implications for the
sexual behaviour of our own species. It uses the Red Queen from Alice in
Wonderland who has to run at full speed to stay where she is as a metaphor
for a whole range of sexual behaviours. The book was shortlisted for the 1994
Rhone-Poulenc Prize for Science Books.
Animals and plants evolved sex to fend off parasitic infection. Now look where
it has got us. Men want BMWs, power and money in order to pair-bond with
women who are blonde, youthful and narrow-waisted a brilliant examination
of the scientific debates on the hows and whys of sex and evolution
Independent.
The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature is a popular science
book by Matt Ridley exploring the evolutionary psychology of sexual selection.
The Red Queen was one of seven books shortlisted for the 1994 Rhne-Poulenc
Prize (now known as the Royal Society Prizes for Science Books), that was
eventually won by Steve Jones' The Language of the Genes.
Ridley argues that few, if any, aspects of human nature can be understood apart
from sex, since human nature is a product of evolution, driven by sexual
reproduction in the case of sexual selection in human evolution.
The book begins with an evolutionary account of sex itself, defending the theory
that sex flourishes, despite its energetic costs, primarily because a sexually
mixed heritage confers to offspring a defensive "head start" against parasites
received from and originally adapted to the maternal host environment.
Toward the end of the book Ridley argues that human intelligence is largely a
result of sexual selection. He argues that human intelligence far outstrips any
survivalist demands that would have been placed on our hominid ancestors, and
analogizes human intelligence to the peacock's tail, a trait widely believed to be
the result of sexual selection. Human intelligence, he suggests, is used primarily
to attract mates through prodigious displays of wit, charm, inventiveness, and

individuality. This view of Intelligence is treated at length in Geoffrey Miller's

The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature
(2001).
Matt Ridley, the author of The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human
Nature, received his BA and D. Phil at Oxford researching the evolution of
behaviour. He has been science editor, Washington correspondent and American
editor of The Economist. He is the author of bestselling titles The Red Queen
(1993), The Origins of Virtue (1996), Genome (1999) and Nature via Nurture
(2003). His books have sold over half a million copies, been translated into 25
languages and been shortlisted for six literary prizes. In 2004 he won the
National Academies Book Award from the US National Academies of Science,
Engineering and Medicine for Nature via Nurture. In 2007 Matt won the Davis
Prize from the US History of Science Society for Francis Crick: Discoverer of
the Genetic Code. He is married to the neuroscientist Professor Anya Hurlbert.