[ExI] Armchair Evolutionary Psychology: Larks vs Night Owls

[Damien Broderick]

At 01:49 PM 3/15/2008 +1030, Emlyn wrote:

>Yep, night owl men and women are up, in the Benny Hill sense, at the
>same time. No gender bias here, I think.

I doubt that we know enough about the sleeping/screwing arrangements 
in our ancient EEAs to be sure about that). It's not as if the two 
moieties are completely separated by time; night owls might go to 
sleep and get up as much as, say, 4 or even 6 hours after the early 
birds (if those ducks and drakes were thoughtful and kept their 
chatter and song to a minimum), but they don't divide the day between 
them. And, horrid though it is to say, while a male probably needs to 
be fairly awake to get it up and in, females have been known to sleep 
through the operation. But that's not the main thing, either, because 
I'm suggesting that while the bright-eyed and bushy-tailed males are 
off hunting and gathering, the late riser male sneaky fuckers are 
sometimes whispering endearing words to the early ducks who are now 
getting ready for a smoko and a cuppa after their morning toil, which 
mixes the alleles up something chronic.

I reckon this all gets too, um, hard to work out without a really 
good sense of the daily economies in question, whether the men and 
women sleep in separate lodges, if there are sacred prohibitions 
against fucking at certain times of the day or liturgical season or 
in the presence of infants at the breast, etc.

Damien Broderick