5 Scientific Explanations for Your Sexual Perversions

The thing about our sexual preferences is that we just accept them -- of course guys like boobs, and couples like kissing. Well ... why? Why don't we rub armpits instead? Why do so many people have foot fetishes? There has to be a reason.

And while maybe we can't explain your thing with puppets, science does have a few ideas about the other stuff we're into.

#5. Foot Fetishes Kept Us Free of STDs

Getty

Looking to warn your kid away from sexually transmitted diseases? Try encouraging him to lust after feet. No, that isn't an excerpt from our parenting guide, So You're Stuck With a Baby: Tips for Making It Interesting. It's actually a sound theory based on some pretty badass science.

Feet are the most fetishized body part out there. There's no obvious reason why -- it's not like, say, a leather fetish, where everyone can look at Catwoman and say, "Yeah, I get that." You can't have sex with feet, and even if you could, would you want to? A lot of fungus lives there.

Condoms won't help, and lube just makes it worse.

Well, scientists wanted to know why, so they started digging. First of all, how did it get started? There are several theories, including one from an expert who says that sensation in the feet and genitals both transmit to the same area of the brain, so there could be some accidental crossover there. But why would it persist through thousands of years of evolution? The answer appears to be disease.

Getty
And the tireless efforts of certain visionary directors.

Researchers collected history's records of foot-lust and compared it with the greatest STD outbreaks of the last thousand years: gonorrhea (the 13th century), syphilis (the 16th century, with an encore in the 19th century) and AIDS (the break-dancing years up to now). Scientists learned two things. The first was a greater appreciation for antibiotics, and the second was that foot fetishes are most prevalent in times of disease.

In other words, when our genitals know it's too dangerous to go outside, we start fantasizing about toes and bunions and the way sneakers smell. To test this theory, an intrepid band of sex researchers looked at the prevalence of feet in eight major pornographic publications from 1965 to 1994. Then they made a graph, because graphs are what get scientists off.

Discover Magazine
You're welcome. Now clean yourselves up.

It's worth noting that a general obsession with feet also correlated with periods of greater female power, as if women themselves were taking away the usual goodies and substituting the third filthiest part of their bodies instead, just to show men what was what.

#4. Oral Sex Helps Prevent Miscarriages

Getty

The nice thing about oral sex is all of it. No one gets pregnant, people who are virgins can stay virgins when they do it and according to the '90s, it doesn't technically count as sexual relations. Win-win-WIN. So it's easy to see why humans and animals and all things with genitals engage in oral sex in the first place. What's not so obvious is the evolutionary value of the act. It doesn't pass on the genes. And what do women get out of going downtown, other than an occasional free pass later on in the month?

Getty
"Let me and my entire extended family visiting for the week explain after you cut the grass."

If Dr. Gustaaf Dekker is to be believed, she gets the benefit of safer future pregnancies ... but only if she swallows.

Among other things, there are unique proteins in every man's sperm, and the more "familiar" a woman is with her partner's semen, the more likely her uterus is to accept it when it's time to procreate. And according to science, or this scientist, anyway, the very best way to get familiar with your future mate's manseed is to digest it.

Getty
Man gravy is good with beef and is best used as a garnish.

Dekker also found that pregnant women who practiced oral sex were less likely to have preeclampsia, a condition where the woman's immune system rejects her own placenta, presumably because she's less likely to recognize the fetus as a foreigner. Dekker puts it this way:

"If there's repeated exposure to that signal then eventually when the woman conceives, her cells will say, 'We know that guy, he's been around a long time, we'll allow the pregnancy to continue.'"

"He got a good job? He law abidin'? He better be."

Here's a hint to teenage boys everywhere: This is not the message you want to pass on to your girlfriend in the back seat of your car.

#3. Multiple Orgasms Exist to Encourage Freaky Group Sex

Getty

We've previously speculated that the female orgasm was strictly a leftover of evolution, that the clitoris is wired to feel good during sex because it's really a pre-penis. But there are other theories about the purpose of the female orgasm out there as well. Such as the one about how orgasms are merely an award for getting freaky with multiple partners. And why would a woman want multiple partners? So none of them would murder her babies.

Getty
"I want what every girl wants: a man who gets confused enough by orgasms that he forgets to kill my children."

According to one anthropologist, and also anyone with sexual experience, the female climax is a completely different animal from the male's. For one thing, it's harder to achieve. And for another, lots of women can have lots of them at once ... just over and over again. Men can't do that.

So Dr. Sarah Hrdy speculates that the orgasm was once an incentive for women to keep on mating once their first, or second, or third partner was done with his business. Because if she mated with lots of guys at once, none of them would know who had fathered her children. Which meant that killing off your rival's kids was impossible -- because they could be your kids. You Game of Thrones fans know what we're talking about here.

"No, his sociopathy is from his mother's side."

Dr. Orgasm's theory is backed up by observations in the animal kingdom. Langur monkeys are relatively (for monkeys) monogamous, and dominant males are all about infanticide in order to secure their rank as alpha male, and also to make the mom stop producing milk so she can mate again. And also because adult langur monkeys are monsters.

Getty
"You know what part of a baby monkey tastes best? The tears."

But you don't find that behavior among macaques and chimpanzees, or at least not nearly as much. And sure enough, the difference is that macaques and chimpanzee females bone lots of different dudes. So, the female orgasm may very well be evolution's reward to women for hosting nasty ape sex parties.

#2. We Kiss to Get Close Enough to Detect Pheromones

Getty

In this article, we explained the theory that kissing evolved as a way for women to expose themselves to cytomegalovirus so their future babies wouldn't get hit with a herpesesque disease in the womb. And man, is that the most unromantic explanation for kissing EVER. The good news is that there are other, less awful theories about smooching out there. One is that we've all got a secret sex nerve in our brains that compels us to swap spit.

Getty
"My nose is telling me it's time to tongue your face-hole."

But first, some background. Everyone has 12 pairs of nerves jutting out of the brainstem, appropriately named Nerve I through Nerve XII. And most of them are regular sensory nerves, like the olfactory one and the optic one and the one that helps us see the dead. But in 1913, scientists discovered another nerve that everyone had missed before. "Nerve 0" (or, as we like to call it, Nerve Oooooh) sits at the base of our skulls, seemingly useless, like a third testicle on an already sterile old man. So it's not surprising that everyone kind of forgot about it.

Getty
Although that doesn't make them shut up about it at parties.

So when scientists finally got around to figuring out what this nerve did, they discovered something funny. Even though it looked like an olfactory nerve, it was present in creatures that had long ago lost their sense of scent. Which means it must have some purpose in humans (and all other animals) besides making public transportation unpleasant. Shortly thereafter, scientists discovered that cutting this nerve caused mice to stop breeding.

It turns out Nerve 0 is directly connected to the regions of the brain associated with sex and gives your nose a direct, private highway to your genitals. Well, that's interesting. What could that be for?

Getty
Stop having sex with those flowers and we'll tell you.

Scientists theorize that when you kiss someone, Nerve 0 picks up their pheromones and warns your body to start sending blood and good vibes down to your crotch as quickly as possible. It's important to note that Nerve 0 doesn't travel through your olfactory bulb at all, which means you can't actually smell any of the things your sex nerve is designed to pick up. And since our pheromones don't carry very well, getting close enough to kiss is basically the only way your Boning Nerve can do you any good.

And what kind of things does your brain learn by picking up pheromones this way? For one thing, it allows you to sneak a peek at your lover's immune system. People you're attracted to will tend to have been exposed to very different antibodies over the course of their lifetimes. This ensures that you have a lower chance of miscarriages and a higher chance of birthing superbabies with badass immune systems. It alsostops you from finding your relatives sexually viable, so let's give it a round of applause for preventing a lot of awkward family reunions.

#1. Big Boobs Exist Thanks to the Missionary Position

Getty

Here's a question we bet you never asked yourself: Why do guys prefer big breasts? Don't say it's because it signals that a woman is more capable of nursing -- huge boobs serve no practical purpose for the delivery of milk. Well, according to one theory, it has to do with our ancestors preferring face-to-face sex.

Getty
"I call them 'shock absorbers.'"

The humble "missionary position" has the unfair reputation of being the boring option for couples too tired to try anything too crazy. But out in the animal kingdom, that position is crazy -- face-to-face sex is something of a revelation for mammals. Our ape ancestors preferred a much less ... frontal method. But the pair bonding that occurs when couples look each other in the eye while doin' it is beneficial enough to humanity that evolution favored people who had face-first sex.

Getty
Also our heads were getting much larger during this time, and that shit gets heavy.

In The Naked Ape, British zoologist and ethologist Desmond Morris proposed that the social benefits to our ancestors who liked missionary-style sex were great enough that evolution favored frontal features that mirrored the backside. Namely, giant breasts that mimic the bulbous buttocks of our great-to-the-power-of-500 grandmas. As Desmond put it:

"The protuberant, hemispherical breasts of the female must surely be copies of the fleshy buttocks, and the sharply defined red lips around the mouth must be copies of the red labia."

Getty
The first time he shopped at the greengrocers, he had to lie down in a dark room for three days.

Of course, Desmond, they must be. And that means that big breasts exist purely to compel attention. In other words, evolution masterminded the single most successful advertising campaign in world history.

Robert Evans oversees the image captions at Cracked and has a blog where he writes letters on our messed-up justice system, illegal immigration, oil drilling and drug policy to the conservative parents of the world. If you'd like to hire him, he can be reached at revanswriter@gmail.com.

For more science behind human actions, check out 6 Obnoxious Old People Habits (Explained by Science) and 6 Factors That Secretly Influence Who You Have Sex With.

And stop by LinkSTORM to discover which columnist won't leave people's feet alone.

And don't forget to follow us on Facebook and Twitter to get sexy, sexy jokes sent straight to your news feed.

Do you have an idea in mind that would make a great article? Then sign up for our writers workshop! Do you possess expert skills in image creation and manipulation? Mediocre? Even rudimentary? Are you frightened by MS Paint and simply have a funny idea? You can create an infographic and you could be on the front page of Cracked.com tomorrow!

Read more: http://www.cracked.com/article_19834_5-scientific-explanations-your-sexual-perversions_p2.html#ixzz2LQGZzxgk

Walk in Dublin Streets Nightlife

http://vimeo.com/56336219

Just Saying from Dave on Vimeo.

'Just saying' film-maker left reeling as short on lost generation strikes a chord online

The frontal lobe is fully mature around age 25

Frontal Lobes Development and Technology Use

Apr 1st, 2009 by Ivo Quartiroli | | Permalink

[en]

Neuroscientist Gary Small, co-author with Gigi Vorga of iBrain: Surviving the technological alteration of the modern mind writes:

Teenagers desire instant gratification – they want to satisfy their needs and do it now, not later. Their underdeveloped frontal lobes often impair their everyday judgment. Many teens feel they are invincible – danger will bounce off them. Today’s obsession with computer technology and video gaming appears to be stunting frontal lobe development in many teenagers, impairing their social and reasoning abilities. If young people continue to mature in this fashion, their brains’ neural pathways may never catch up. It is possible that they could remain locked into a neural circuitry that stays at an immature and self-absorbed emotional level, right through adulthood.

Then he writes that when we act in a way that gratifies our needs instantly, the brain’s emotional centers, the parts of the brain which aren’t able to plan for the future, take over.

What’s the role of the frontal lobes? From Wikipedia:

The frontal lobe reaches full maturity around age 25, marking the cognitive maturity associated with adulthood. Arthur Toga, UCLA, found increased myelin in the frontal lobe white matter of young adults compared to that of teens. A typical onset of schizophrenia in early adult years correlates with poorly myelinated and thus inefficient connections between cells in the fore-brain…The frontal lobe contains most of the dopamine-sensitive neurons in the cerebral cortex. The dopamine system is associated with reward, attention, long-term memory, planning, and drive. Dopamine tends to limit and select sensory information arriving from the thalamus to the fore-brain. A report from the National Institute of Mental Health says a gene variant that reduces dopamine activity in the prefrontal cortex is related to poorer performance and inefficient functioning of that brain region during working memory tasks, and to slightly increased risk for schizophrenia…The executive functions of the frontal lobes involve the ability to recognize future consequences resulting from current actions, to choose between good and bad actions (or better and best), override and suppress unacceptable social responses, and determine similarities and differences between things or events. Therefore, it is involved in higher mental functions.

If there’s a time in history where a long-term vision is needed, it’s now. Both in the environmental and financial areas we are going to pay the cost heavily for a short-term view. Environmentally, we exploited the planet’s resources as if they were infinite with a very short-term view of the consequences of our decisions.

Financially, the credit craze privileged the consumption today over the bill tomorrow, putting the whole system in a mess which nobody knows if and when it will ever recover. Without a well-developed frontal lobe, the higher mental faculties of long-term planning are substituted by short-term childish gratification.

The frontal lobes “determine similarities and differences between things or events.” It seems that the frontal lobes integrate the qualities of clear mental discrimination, which allows us to make subtle distinctions and to recognize the truth.

On a spiritual plane, “discriminating awareness” is an important mental quality to develop in the path toward an expanded awareness. Even though the qualities of mental discrimination are going to be overcome in the advanced stages of the path, those stages can’t be bypassed. While the absence of mental discrimination in an enlightened being means joining a larger awareness which doesn’t depend on the conceptual mind any more, in a person who didn’t train his mind and soul it means a schizophrenic state.

Without well-developed frontal lobes in the population, political leaders can easily manipulate truth, gain approvals with highly emotive messages and contradict themselves often – with no consequences. If people can’t see the big picture any more, focusing only on the last novelty with a weak memory, there’s not even any need any more by states to threaten the freedom of the press. Simply, people won’t be bothered by consistency and truth any more. Then promises and declarations by politicians can be disproved without even being noticed.

Damage to the frontal lobes include distractibility, poor attention and poor memory. Those damages also cause inability to plan ahead and indifference to people and the world around, alternated with euphoric and uninhibited behaviors. Those symptoms are related to physical damage to the frontal lobes and it would be going too far to apply them to the use of technology: however there’s a strong resemblance of those symptoms with Internet addiction or with attention deficit disorder.

Many pediatrics associations suggest to parents to avoid video technology in the first 2 years of age, while the Waldorf education method refrains from exposing a child to technology till much later to respect the cognitive and emotional development of children. Without need of brain scans and neurotechnological tools, the mystical sensitivity is able to connect with the inner nature of the mind.

If frontal lobe development is being stunted in young people by the massive use of technology there’s little surprise that those symptoms are rising in young people as well as in older people who have already had their frontal lobes developed, on different levels of intensity. On a widespread level, with the fast pace of technology, more and more people experience difficulties in concentrating on a long task, as for instance in reading books.

So will the world resemble Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, where society was structured in such a way that every desire was satisfied in a short time? In case of unpleasurable feelings, there was soma, the perfect drug with no side effects.

I feel the conflict between short- and long-term goals will be at the center stage in the next few years, as well as the one between the mind frames for specialization versus seeing the whole picture. System theory and the science of complexity are important developments toward a vision of reality which takes complex interactions into consideration, but basically they are founded on the same thought modalities of specialization and reductionism.

For instance, now we have much more knowledge of the complex environmental interactions but we are still far from seeing the whole picture. Like the search for the elementary particles, there will probably be no end in that knowledge. Though the more we progress in environmental knowledge, if we just rely on information, the more we risk making bigger disasters looking for “solutions,” as in the geo-engineering proposals to “hack and fix the planet” in order to reverse global warming.

We can probably find good advice in ancient Taoist, American Indian, or just philosophies of organic farmers on how to interact as human beings with nature and, it would be much better if we join those philosophies with scientific data.

What is needed in the complex world is to conjoin the science of complexity with a sensitive intellect connected both to the inner world of the soul and the outer world. An intellect which can pierce reality and thoughts, with an intuitive and large vision, a kind of wisdom which allows wise people to know the depth of reality through direct contact.

See also:

Social networking and instant fulfillment

Saving time through technology

Metabolizing information

Mental territories



http://marryingbefore25.blogspot.ie/2010/10/25-and-human-brain-reason-to-wait.html