What makes an individual attractive to the opposite sex? Does size really matter? Why do we sometimes "keep score" in our relationships? From perfume and cosmetics to online dating and emotional therapy, we invest much of our personal resources and energy on successfully connecting with someone, notes animal behavior researcher and Psychology Today blogger Jennifer Verdolin—so why is romance such an effort for humans, while animals seem to so easily get it right? Here she compares human personal dynamics—including her own—with equivalent courtship rituals and mating behaviors of animals, offering a witty, often surprising perspective on why we behave the way we do.
"Verdolin takes a lighthearted, pop-science approach toward applying some biologically deterministic lessons to her own romantic life, looking for analogies to mainstream heterosexual dating behavior throughout the animal kingdom."—Publishers Weekly