Includes bibliographical references and index.

"To find out why people have sex, Curt Lively trawls a New Zealand lake for mud snails. Mayte Parada puts volunteers in an MRI scanner and turns on the porn. Andrea Ganna searches the genomes of half a million Brits. Almond-scented rats, Genghis Khan's family tree, Pornhub statistics-it's all in a day's work for sex researchers. This book introduces readers to sex researchers and explains the questions they are asking and the methods they are using to discover the answers. Renowned sex researcher Simon LeVay asks: Why do humans have sex? What happens in the brain when we're getting it on? How do 'kinks' develop? What is love? And many other topics-some frivolous, some tragically serious-all studied by fearless but fallible researchers. Sex, they have shown, is as worthy of scientific inquiry as any other facet of human nature"--,Provided by publisher.