Alan asks:

>Not too many guys - even superior, God's-gift-to-women ones like you
>and me -  get groupies.
>
>Musicians and suchlike performing artists - even rather mediocre ones
>- get this all the time. And it happens in other-than-western
>cultures, too.
>
>Bio-evolutionarily wise..... why?

This is actually a very serious evolutionary question, and the first to ask it
was Darwin. Darwin's answer was the process of "sexual selection," where
females choose high-fitness males, males that have demonstrated their capacity
to successfully compete in a open-ended arena.

In general, female choice plays a lesser role in mammals than it does in birds.
Indeed, almost every student of mammalian behavior has long noticed that even
when the rut or male-male contest characteristic of the larger species (equids,
cervids, ovids, pinnipeds, etc.) occurs within sight of the herd of conspecific
females, the females rarely pay any attention to the actual contest. Rather,
they simply accept the winner as the harem master -- and sire of the next
generation -- for however long he can hold onto that position.

Nonetheless, your example of musicians -- and that of even minor league sports
players -- strongly suggest a pronounced female choice component to sexual
selection in some mammal species, with humans certainly included in that list.
Wilt Chamberlain often made mention that he had close encounters with 30,000
different women during his playing career. I have no way of knowing if that's
true, but if it is, as of today, he's outnumbered me by 29,999. Unfortunately,
I represent the other end of the mammalian spectrum: lifelong monogamy.

The general reason given for the formation of female coteries is that catering
to the males who have demonstrated their capacities to excel on some form of
battle have thus simultaneously demonstrated not only their capacity to
successfully compete and gain access to the excess resources necessary to raise
a brood but have also demonstrated their absence of primary congenital defects.


Wirt Atmar
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