In most mammal species, fathers have nothing to do with their offspring after mating. Caring duties fall to the mother and, in some animals like elephants, her female relatives. Humans, mostly, are exceptional…
- Scientia Professor of Evolution, UNSW
In a century chock-full of cultural innovation, from communism to televangelism and from Rubik’s cube to airline travel, few 20th Century peacetime developments influenced the world as profoundly as rock…
There’s this gene that about half of all people carry. It’s a pretty nasty gene – it massively increases the risk of the carrier being a murderer or a murder victim, going to jail or dying in an accident…
We evolutionary biologists over-enthuse at times about the competitive nature of selection. Observing animals in the wild often compels one to agree with the 17th-century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes…
We all know somebody like Dick: a bloke who rates himself for no apparent reason and who optimistically reckons every woman – especially every attractive woman – is interested in him. Most of us have met…
SEVEN BILLION PEOPLE: I had better write fast. Sometime between my deadline to submit this story and the time it goes live, the estimated world population will exceed 7 billion for the first time ever…
A stroll down the personal growth aisle of the bookstore tells us, among other things, Why Men Don’t Listen and Women Can’t Read Maps. The answer, as authors Alan and Barbara Pease delightedly inform their…
So Penny Wong, our finance minister, is going to be a mum. Sophie Allouache, Wong’s long-term partner, announced on Tuesday that her IVF-conceived baby will arrive in December. While many commentators…
One glance at our species can give the impression that we’re conniving, selfish and pretty greedy. But look at other species and you’ll get a broader perspective: compared to other animals, people are…
For the first time ever, the number of overweight people on Earth outweighs the number that are undernourished. From the obesity crisis flows a cascade of health and social problems: it burdens healthcare…
Kurt Cobain was the messiah of my generation, the monumental talent who saved rock from the mediocrity of 1980s cock rock and hair metal. But behind his public eminence stalked a personal hell of addiction…
It’s the sort of news conservative politicians and commentators latch on to as a sure-fire sign that the end of civilisation is nigh: marriage rates are in continuing decline. But is this really such a…
Getting research money, especially the no-strings-attached kind that government agencies give out, is difficult. Researchers spend months on each proposal with only a small chance of getting funded. Winning…
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