From Monogamous Mice to Androgynous Anchovies

Many scientists are reporting that Genes may be even more influential to how humans behave than was previously thought to be the case. I can kind of see what they mean. Gene Rayburn hosted my favorite game show, Match Game. Gene Kelly was one of the best dancers ever. Gene Simmons has one of the longest tongues ever. Gene Moore is considered the top window dresser of the 20th century. (I did not make that up. I found it on Wikipedia.) But I fail to see how these giants in their fields influence all of human behavior.
What’s that? Oh, I feel somewhat embarrassed. It is not “Genes” its genes. Genes are those tiny little doohickeys hanging out within our DNA which lay out the blueprint for the building of people. Back in the 1800’s a scientist guy named Gregor Mendel studied inheritance in pea plants and hypothesized about how traits are passed from parent to offspring. Most the time this concept was simply applied to what color a kid’s eyes would be due to the eye color of the parents. Do you remember doing those Punnet Squares in tenth grade biology? I hated those things.
It seems the more we learn about genes and how humans are hard-wired the more it becomes clear we really don’t know how much influence they have over many more nuanced aspects of who we are. A recent study done by a group of Swedish scientists discusses how a certain gene in men can lead to having better marriages.
This relationship enhancing gene is in charge of modulating the hormone vasopressin. The word “vasopressin” is from an archaic East Indian language and translates to “one who admits he is wrong even when he is not”. Okay, I made that up. It really means “one who considers having power over the remote control a god given right”. I made that up, too.
The thing is all this stuff I’m making up is not all that strange compared to the real story. The scientists first became tuned into this gene and the attendant hormone while studying voles. Voles? I had to run to Wikipedia yet again.
Voles are rodents. Great, when deciding what to study in order to get an insight into how men do well or not in a long-term relationship scientists look to rodents. I’m offended. I mean voles are not even tough rodents. Why couldn’t it have been capybaras? They are rodents with attitude, weighing in at over 170 pounds. But, no. They had to go and compare us to male voles. Animals that have a list of predators longer than the list of people who want to slap Britney Spears. They do not even grow bigger than seven inches long, and here’s the kicker, the female is larger than the male. That might explain why a vole is monogamous. She can kick his short hairy tail.
Here is a direct quote from the article as it appeared on the Yahoo News webpage. “They (the researchers) found that men with a certain variant, known as an allele, of the vasopressin 1a gene, called 334, tended to score especially low on a standard psychological test called the Partner Bonding Scale. They were also less likely to be married than men carrying another form of the gene. And carrying two copies of the 334 allele doubled the odds that the men had undergone some sort of marital crisis over the past year.”
Well. I have only one thing to say to that. Huh?
The very next day after I read about rodents being a “vole” model for men committed to their relationship I read another scientific report. This report talked about how all those chemicals man keeps pumping into the environment have effects on genes. Pair that with what I just learned about the importance of genes in regards to how people function and this news is as frightening as one of those John Stossel reports on 20/20.
The scientific genius guy reporting in this article said the chemicals leaking out into the water supply are likely the reason why many fish species are mutating. How are they mutating? They are developing both male and female sex organs. That’s quite a mutation.
If this phenomenon expands to humans there is a bright side. Men with the 334 allele will have a better chance of maintaining a long term relationship if it is with himself.