Latest Mating Stories

Is there an answer to the question, “What makes a happy marriage”? The answer may be found in how generous spouses are to each other. Do you make your spouse a cup of coffee, order flowers or provide a backrub? Then you may find yourself with a long-lasting and stable relationship. A new study by the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia revealed couples who reported a high amount of generosity in their relationship were five times more likely to say their marriage...

Scientists have observed a strategy for females to avoid unwanted male attention: choosing more attractive friends. Published today (7 December) in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, the study is the first to show females spending time with those more sexually attractive than themselves to reduce harassment from males. Carried out by the Universities of Exeter and Copenhagen, the study focuses on the Trinidadian guppy, a species of small freshwater fish. It shows that the...

Young Muslims around the world have discovered a new way of dating and getting to know a potential life partner without breaking the rules and traditions of their culture. (PRWEB) November 11, 2011 Until now, it was not possible for young Muslim couples to really get to know each other, because the Muslim world does not accept dating in the way other cultures understand dating. Having a string of boyfriends or girlfriends before settling down into a permanent relationship, something so...

Subordinate male cichlid fish who help with the childcare for the dominant breeding pair are occasionally actually the fathers of some of the offspring they help to rear, according to new research from the University of Bristol published today in PLoS ONE. This sneaky paternity increases the subordinate fish’s investment in the offspring in their care. The highly social cichlid fish Neolamprologus pulcher, endemic to Lake Tanganyika in Africa, live in social groups consisting of a...

In the animal world, males typically search for their female partners. The mystery is that in some species, you get a reversal -- the females search for males. A new study of katydids in the latest issue of the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B -- co-authored by University of Toronto Mississauga professor Darryl Gwynne -- supports a theory that females will search if males offer a lot more than just sperm. "In this beast [in this study], it's a big cheesy, gooey substance that...

   [ Watch the Video ] Researchers on an 18-year study of the Octopoteuthis deletron, a species of squid that is found at a depth of 1300 to 2600 feet in the Eastern Pacific Ocean, found that males mate as often with their own gender as they do with females, reports BBC News. By studying footage taken by submersible vehicles, researchers, led by Hendrik Hoving of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) in Moss Landing, California, found that this rarely seen marine...

For better or worse, marital quality influences the well-being of couples and those around them. In addition, economic and social hardships can reduce overall happiness within marriages. According to a new study from the University of Missouri, low-income couples who receive government assistance, such as Medicaid or Food Stamps, are significantly less satisfied and committed in their marriages. “We found that there’s a unique relationship among income level, government assistance and...

Ultimate goal is to provide stability for children Child welfare professionals know that children are safer and healthier when the adults in their lives have healthy relationships, but most social workers are not trained to educate couples about strong relationships and marriages. Researchers at the University of Missouri are working to train child welfare professionals and future social workers to help individuals and families strengthen their relationships. Funded by the U.S....

Think about how much you fight and argue with your spouse today.  A new study suggests that your current level of conflict probably won't change much for the remainder of your marriage.That may be good news for the 16 percent of couples who report little conflict or even the 60 percent who have only moderate levels of conflict.  But it's not such happy news for the 22 percent of couples who say they fight and argue with each other a lot.The study followed nearly 1,000 couples over 20...

Aggressive male mating behavior might well be a successful reproductive strategy for the individual but it can drive the species to extinction, an international research team headed by evolutionary biologist Daniel Rankin from the University of Zurich has demonstrated in a mathematical model. Evolutionary biologists have long debated whether the behavior of the individual is able to influence processes on a population or species level. The possibility of selection at species level is still...