Comments on: Sex with someone from the future can be hazardous to your health

By: Time-Traveling Sex Partners May Be Bad for Your Health, Scientists Say

Time-Traveling Sex Partners May Be Bad for Your Health, Scientists Say — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 01:44:25 +0000

[...] Evolutionary ecologist Nicolas Rode of the Center for Functional and Evolutionary Ecology in Montpellier, France, and his colleagues discovered that mating with time-traveling partners can shorten one’s lifespan, Discover Magazine noted. [...]

By: Jay

Jay — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 19:44:03 +0000

Aside from the dubious methods involved, was there really nothing else with a higher priority? Cancer? Baldness?
Were I to figure out time travel (or even a Rip vanWinkle trip) and survive, I would be taking victory lap and rockin it like Charlie Sheen on a bender!
Have towel, will travel.

By: Time-Traveling Sex Partners May Be Bad for Your Health, Scientists Say « Health News, Articles, and Information

Mon, 20 Jun 2011 16:46:56 +0000

By: Floyd

Floyd — Sun, 19 Jun 2011 20:21:31 +0000

42 is the answer, but what is the question?

By: Weird Science tunes in to the water bugs’ penile chorus | Tech News

Weird Science tunes in to the water bugs’ penile chorus | Tech News — Sun, 19 Jun 2011 19:38:48 +0000

[...] traveling sea monkeys show lethality of sex: This paper comes courtesy of another Discover blogger, Carl Zimmer. He’s found a paper in which researchers have tested sex throughout the ages, or [...]

By: David B. Benson

David B. Benson — Sun, 19 Jun 2011 06:16:56 +0000

The answer, of course, is “42″.

By: Sex With Someone From The Future Can Be Hazardous To Your Health « Guerrilla Ontology

Sat, 18 Jun 2011 00:44:53 +0000

[...] Sex With Someone From The Future Can Be Hazardous To Your Health Posted: June 17, 2011 by joelnickel in Culture, Science Tags: Brine Shrimp, Discover Magazine, Sex, Sexuality, Terminator, Time Travel 0 Via Discover Magazine [...]

By: Jonathan Roth

Jonathan Roth — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 21:58:37 +0000

“I’m Zaphod Beeblebrox the first, my father was Zaphod Beeblebrox the second, my grandfather was Zaphod Beeblebrox the third and so on…there was an accident with a contraceptive and a time machine.”

The Restaurant at the End of the Eniverse

By: Carl Zimmer

Carl Zimmer — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 12:54:07 +0000

Yes, the females also got to mate with males from their own time. That worked out best for them, as the graph shows.

By: David Dobbs

David Dobbs — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 12:12:22 +0000

So one comes from the future and one from the past. Do they ever both come in the present?

By: Ralph Clark

Ralph Clark — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 12:04:35 +0000

Can fruit flies or brine shrimp suffer from STI’s ? I thought aquatic species males generally splurge over the eggs after they’re laid but if so then what’s the cuddling all about?

[CZ: Lots of different ways to make babies in the sea...including amplexus]

By: Uncle Demotivator

Uncle Demotivator — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 10:50:23 +0000

This arms race between male and females reminds me the Cold War – both sides are threatening each other and both sides doesn’t really want to unleash all their firepower because they know that doing so would made them extinct.

By: Rod Taylor

Rod Taylor — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 09:27:23 +0000

Isn’t your headline backwards? The female was a present day female, the males were from the past.

Sex with someone from the past can be harmful.

I assume it’s because 1985 shrimp smoked after sex.

[CZ: I'll clarify the text. The scientists ran several mating experiments--females got to mate with males from the same year, from the past, and from the future. So, for example, females from 1985 got to mate with males from 1996 and 2007, while females from 2007 got to mate with males from 1985 and 1996.]

By: Sex with someone from the future can be hazardous to your health | The Loom | Job-Sample.info

Fri, 17 Jun 2011 01:18:06 +0000

[...] more on Discover This entry was posted in Job Sample and tagged from, future, hazardous, health, Loom, someone. [...]

By: Sex with someone from the future can be hazardous to your health « Designated Area

Thu, 16 Jun 2011 22:41:09 +0000

[...] http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2011/06/16/sex-with-someone-from-the-future-can-be-hazardous-... [...]

By: Josh

Josh — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 18:56:50 +0000

Per the enviromental contaminants suggestion – of note, what was collected were eggs rather than fully mature adults. The eggs *could* have been contaminated, but if they were at such a degree that those contaminants would be widely present in adult cells the shrimp likely wouldn’t have made it to adulthood

By: Luigi

Luigi — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 18:34:44 +0000

@Chris. Its interesting to apply this idea to humans. In my opinion, since the major populations have practiced monogamy, every individual has approximately an equal chance of producing offspring and passing on his genes, therefore it seems we have stopped evolution at this level. One thing which comes to mind relating to this topic is the idea which is still being studied, that cervical cancer may also be caused my male DNA in sperm which interacts with female epithelium causing mutagenesis, especially if the male works in toxic environments.

By: Chris Lindsay

Chris Lindsay — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 18:10:52 +0000

This doesn’t bode well for those people who have opted to be frozen via cryogenic processing.

By: Luigi

Luigi — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 17:29:24 +0000

Thanks for the reply. I understand, I am assuming that the toxic chemical used as anti-aphrodisiac is brought about by mutations which increase toxicity, favouring the males secreting it, but up to a certain level which does not sufficiently damage the female, correct?

By: Luigi

Luigi — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 17:12:19 +0000

Would 20 years be enough for visible evolutionary behavior to change the way these eukaryotes mate? When taking into consideration the evolutionary experiment with bacteria, which divide at a much higher rate, this would be very unlikely I think.

[CZ: Luigi--The shrimp spanned 160 generations in this study. The lab experiments I described in my post on flies got measurable evolutionary changes in far fewer generations.]

By: Carl Zimmer

Carl Zimmer — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 16:57:01 +0000

That wouldn’t explain how the time-travel effect works if the male comes from the future and if he comes from the past.

By: Romeo Vitelli

Romeo Vitelli — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 16:38:25 +0000

Were all other environmental factors ruled out, i.e., males from a later time period having more environmental contaminants in their bodies (pollutants, insecticides, etc) to which females from an earlier period might have reduced tolerance?