I've always envied the male boar. One drop of his saliva makes an ovulating sow become instantly paralyzed in a spread-legged mating posture. No opening line, no expensive dinners, no chit-chat. Just one lick, and boom, she's crazy about you. Talk about a self esteem boost. Imagine picking out the lady you're attracted to, and guaranteeing your success with an introductory slurp. Maybe Michael Bolton could have pulled it off in his heyday, but most Homo sapiens men can only dream of such bearish appeal. When a Homo sapiens male sees healthy young skin, firm breasts, and child-bearing hips, he knows right away that this woman will produce many healthy babies, and he's turned on. But wait. He also knows he could conceivably impregnate hundreds of such females. Chieftains of the past did it like crazy, passing on their Mack daddy genes. If all the men in the world dropped dead except that pimply teenager at Kinko's, and women organized a global round-robin to make him repopulate the earth, the young man would heroically shoulder his responsibility to humanity without complaining. A female would be less excited to be in his position. Anybody who bears the baby is going to want one prime choice for a sperm donor. And the turn-ones are different. A man is attracted to a woman's ability to grow a baby inside her. A woman is attracted to a man's ability to grow a baby outside him. How does he do that? Resources. Both women's and men's bodies are built to nourish a child on the Pleistocene savant. One is built to bear and nurse. The other is built to get stuff. In any species that survives by cooperation, stuff is gotten through social power. In all social species with pair-bonds, females are attracted to evidence that males display a chance for power in the community. Female rhesus macaque monkeys seem pretty good at predicting which males will rise to social dominance. The young low-status males who get extra nookie often grow up to achieve alpha status. There are two ways to interpret this. Either female seductresses magically cause males to become alphas, or female attraction has predictive power. Why do females have to predict? Why can't females just sleep with today's top dog? It's not so easy when female genes have a split agenda.