Nice guys don't always finish last
Or so they now say.
Researchers at Binghamton University and the University of Arizona say, given the choice, ladies will pick the good fella rather than the rotter.
Well, in the insect world anyway!
They studied sexual conflict in water striders which showed that, to use an analogy, a bloke who spends the night in a bar hassling ladies with dodgy chat-up lines puts off the females from mating with anyone.
However, if women are able to make a stress-free decision they will find the nicest guy around to swim off with.
While lead scientist on the research, Omar Tonsi Eldakar thought of the insects as 'nice guys' vs 'jerks', his co-author David Sloan Wilson wasn't as charitable. He termed them 'gentlemen' vs 'psychopaths'!
I must admit this doesn't really ring true. In my (much) younger days I used to know blokes who would act nasty just to get the girl.
But ladies should beware of a rare beast. The bad guy who pretends to be a good guy pretending to be bad!
Weird Science Factoids: An airplane mechanic invented the Slinky while he was mucking around with engine parts. Genius!
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Authors
Daniel Smith - a long time ago, in a galaxy far away just north of Watford, Daniel fancied himself as a scientist but turned out to be the worst scientist since that bloke who mapped out all those canals on Mars that turned out to be scratches on his telescope's lens. Luckily, he is now not working on the Large Hadron Collider inadvertently creating a black hole that would swallow the world but is safely behind a desk writing this blog, bringing you the fantastical underbelly of nature... weird science.
