{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.018645357686453576, 'fraction_numerical': 0.001902587519025875, 'mean_word_length': 4.988610478359909, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
MAKING SENSE OF THE EVOLUTION OF HUMAN BEHAVIOR1

Every year New Scientist magazine holds a competition, and the 2002 version asked readers to ‘‘think of a human trait or behaviour and then provide their own evolutionary explanation for it.’’ Winning entries proposed explanations for why fashion models look so morose onstage (it is a holdover from the days of nubile sacrificial virgins, who were elaborately costumed) to why scientists so commonly wear glasses (hunter-gatherers with poor vision were abandoned by the rest of the tribe unless they compensated with inventive and useful skills) to the classic, why men would not ask for directions (drawing attention to being lost causes a hunter to scare away game). Whether you find the explanations credible or not, the contest certainly shows that when it comes to adaptive storytelling, everyone fancies themselves an expert. The problem is that with so many experts, to whom should we listen? The field of evolution and human behavior has been extraordinarily contentious, sparking debates about IQ and race, the meaning of culture, rates of evolution in modern society, and more. Even if one does not attempt to do research on questions involving humans, as is true of most evolutionary biologists, it is still worth understanding the issues involved. First, for many members of the general public, human behavior is the interface with evolution that interests them the most. Debates about fossils or avian bill sizes simply do not grab the public’s attention the way that discussion of the adaptive significance of rape does. Like it or not, it behooves us to have some understanding of the issues so that we can at least place questions from nonscientists in perspective. In addition, many of the questions addressed deal directly with such important topics in evolutionary biology as the relationship between genes and the environment in producing traits or the importance of past history in current adaptations. Finally, many people balk at including humans at all in discussions of evolution, claiming that culture somehow lifts us out of the usual rules and constraints of selection. This special place for humans and human behavior has provided fodder for some creationists, who claim that as long as we acknowledge humanity’s unique relation with God, we can go ahead with evolution for everything else. If evolutionary biologists are to counter this argument, we must be prepared to explain how we do view the evolution of human characteristics. Sense and Nonsense deals adroitly with all of these issues and more, by providing a primer to the five primary ap-