Silverback syndrome strikes again

Back when I started seriously posting on my very tiny corner of the blogosphere, I wrote this article:

What Happens Behind Closed Doors?

In this magnificent treatise, I include this commentary:
"... and that brings us to the silverback "Alpha Male" syndrome, whereby an older famous beautiful male indulges the primal urge to fertilize the young and fertile. This explains Heidi Klum and Flavio, and how Flavio was already moving on once the fertilization of Heidi had been accomplished. I could go in another direction on the whole older rich famous beautiful male and the young fertilizable female phenomenon and its genetic heritage from our ancestral Australopithecines, but I won't, except to note that Kevin Costner's current wife is SO hot."

Herewith today, further examples of the silverback syndrome:

Exhibit A
A baby on the way for Monty Python star Terry Jones and lover who's 41 years younger

which includes this comment:
"'He doesn't seem fazed by it, but everyone else is,' said a family friend who has been close to both Jones and his wife for decades. 'If anything, I think it's a classic case of male pride taking over. Getting a young filly pregnant proves there's life in the old dog yet.

Exhibit B
This is Emma Heming, newly-wed to Bruce Willis.
24 years younger than Bruce Willis.










So what's the silverback syndrome? Well, simply put, the silverback is the dominant male gorilla. He's the most successful male gorilla -- biggest, strongest -- and the main result of his recognized dominance and protective capabilities for his harem is that he gets first pick -- actually, he gets every pick -- of which females to mate with. Now, in order to have the strongest combinatorial genetics, the young female gorillas will offer themselves for mating to acquire the silverback's genes for their offspring. It's all Darwinian and such, a behavior maintain to maximize the likelihood of one's own genetic heritage being passed on to future generations.


Gorilla Social Spacing

So since we Westerners frown on polygamy, the silverbacks among us must content themselves with finding the genetically superior young females to fertilize -- and genetically superior's external characteristics tend to be quite attractive to most of us. Thus the silverback syndrome -- successful (rich) older male with genetically superior (hot) young female. The female gets the protection of the silverback's resources to favor the likelihood of survival of her offspring (which also get the silverback's genes, which should mean genetic superiority from the male side), and the silverback gets to produce offspring combining his genes with that of the genetically superior female, which garners him the genetic superiority from the female side. All very simple. And thus we gawk in amazement at Bruce with the amazingly genetically superior Emma, whilst we should not be surprised at all.