Science

Darwin Day + Valentine’s Day = ?

Answer: Darwinian Pick-Up Lines!

Today, February 12, is Darwin Day. Wednesday, February 14, is Valentine’s Day. It’s only natural that we combine the two. I know we’ve done science pick-up lines before, but I want these to be a bit more targeted. I’ll get you started.

“Out of all the hot guys in this bar, I sexually selected you.”

“I want your DNA.”

“Would you like to take a trip on my Beagle?”

Please submit your Darwin-themed pick-up lines below. I’ll choose a winner at the end of the day Wednesday — that smartie will win a free (belated) Valentine’s Day card from me (actual value: $340)! Only submissions posted as comments to this thread will be considered. Get on it, peeps.

Rebecca Watson

Rebecca is a writer, speaker, YouTube personality, and unrepentant science nerd. In addition to founding and continuing to run Skepchick, she hosts Quiz-o-Tron, a monthly science-themed quiz show and podcast that pits comedians against nerds. There is an asteroid named in her honor. Twitter @rebeccawatson Mastodon mstdn.social/@rebeccawatson Instagram @actuallyrebeccawatson TikTok @actuallyrebeccawatson YouTube @rebeccawatson BlueSky @rebeccawatson.bsky.social

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85 Comments

  1. tobias: Disqualified on the grounds of Social Darwinism. ;)

    Hey, baby, my genes would confer a survival advantage to our offspring.

    Baby, I got just what you need: matching pairs of your beneficial but recessive alleles.

  2. Joshua: You meanie. :'(

    Well, at least I'm evolved enough to not be hindered by my masculine side. So i no longer have to put other people down to feel superior. Nor do i have to feel superior.

  3. "Babe, your phenotype take's my breath away."

    Ok, so perhaps not Darwin specific, and perhaps a wrong use of the word 'phenotype,' but it's the best I could come up with.

  4. "Let's get out of here and violate Genesis all night long."

    "What's your karyotype? XX? Hey, I'm an XY! Isn't that just incredible?"

    "You look like you need someone to travel over your tropics."

    (Perhaps best used at "Boston Poly" night in that one bar in Davis Square.) "Hey, you two interested in a little group selection?"

  5. "The gene-centered view of evolution assumes that genes are well-mixed throughout the population at all times. . . so what say you and I go uphold the assumption and mix a little hereditary material?"

    "Wanna chance to scream blasphemy?"

    "You know, they say atheism is just another religion. . . and baby, let me tell you I'm skilled in the ancient rituals."

    Not strictly Darwinian, so don't count it: "Baby, you are star stuff. . . Your atoms came from a supernova, and boy, they sure remember how to be hot."

  6. " They say that the male nipple hasn't got a use anymore. I'm sure we can come up with a trial to prove that wrong. "

    "I got a jacuzzi we can turn into a gene pool."

    "There's been five mass extinctions so far, but when we get going there's gonna be a sixth."

  7. Baby, you don't happen to have a tiny Charles Darwin inside of you? Cause you are one fine phenotype.

    Baby, I hope your in to natural selection, cause I am one successful gene spreading organism.

    You know, they say the Bonobo is one of the most sexually active of all primates… What say you and I try to change all that?

  8. Lesser known part of the scandalous Charles/Camilla phone call: "I only wish I could evolve on your islands."

  9. "Wanna come up to my apartment and see my cladograms?"

    "That outfit really enhances your secondary sexual characteristics."

    "What's a nice PhD candiate like you doing at a creationist rally like this?"

    "Is it subverting our genetic imperative if you cum all over my face?"

    "Are you sure Haldane's dilemma isn't about how to do it in a hatchback?"

    "I don't want to boast about my staying power, but by the time we're finished, Kent Hovind will be out of jail".

    "Darling, would you be my Emma Wedgwood?"

    "Let's you and me co-evolve a symbiotic relationship (in my pants)"

  10. Pangloss on the dating scene: "Observe that the legs are visibly designed to wear fishnet stockings, and so we have fishnet stockings. The neck is admirably formed to be encircled by a leather collar, and thus we have leather collars. Orange juice is ideally suited to mask the taste of GHB, and thus we have GHB. . . ."

  11. A pteridophyta is sitting at a bar, and a tracheophyta approaches.

    "How would you like to sample all 500 of my chromosomes?"

    "I'm sorry, I don't get into bed for less than 1200."

    "So it's true. Girls just want to have fern."

  12. "Hey baby, in the Galapogos, they can tell which island the finches were from when eating them… how about you let me find out where you're from?"

  13. "I want to take you home tonight. I know it may seem impossible without the intercession of a creator, but if you'll give me a chance, I can show you a sequence of small steps that will have the same result!"

    Ok, not so great. Maybe if I spent more than 30 seconds on it.

  14. "The ladies tell me they find my voluminous white beard pleasurable…care to take a test ride?"

    "Here's an idea…you, me, and my distant cousin Lucy."

    "My genes may be selfish, but I'm an altruist at heart. That's why I'll be sure you finish first"

  15. I'm not seeing enough Darwin specific pick-up lines.

    "Baby, I'd dunk my asparagus in your tub all day long."

    "I saw you checking out my barnacle from over there. You know, if you investigate it, we could name it after you."

    "I've been spending some time on a two column list of pros and cons: 'Tap It / Not Tap It'. After several weeks of deliberation, I have to go with Tap It."

    "I can think of someplace I'd like to Wedgewood."

    "Yeah, my sideburns are bitchin', but someday my beard will get me on the 5 pound note."

    "Whenever I encounter a new species, I always have to eat it…if you know what I mean."

    "Why don't you come over to my place and take a ride on my beetle."

    "Never mind my friends over there who are yelling 'Go it, Charlie!'. I would sincerely like to pick your brain about breeding practices."

  16. 1. "We share a significant amount of DNA with plants. So coming over and introducing myself is a little like giving you a beautiful bunch of flowers."

    2. "According to Darwin we're like the cousins of apes, which excuses my ape like chat-up line. Really, I'm only tens of thousands of years away from beating my chest. Pleased to meet you. My name is Jack. What's yours?"

    3. "Seven letters: A-C-G-T-Y-O-U." (with accompanying finger letters)

    4. "According to some evolution probably doesn't exist, and it's just a theory. So why breed selectively? Come on – give me a chance!"

  17. You know… I'm not so good with words, but if you run my Complex Specified Information through your Explanatory Filter, you'll see that my feelings for you are Irreducibly Complex. And you're so beautiful sometimes I think you must have been Intelligently Designed. But, no, all this is just a show. It's just my Wedge Strategy to bring down your Naturalistic defences. Let me be honest now and say what I truly mean: let's make sweet evolution together, baby.

  18. Well, not exactly Darwinian, but this one made me laugh:

    "So, darlin', how do you like your eggs in the morning? Scrambled or fertilized?"

  19. I was going to try "I like the cut of your karyotype", but after Iasarus's contribution above, I really don't think I stand a chance.

  20. Lol…reading these I could only imagine that if some guy was using these pick-up lines in a bar what I'd say in reply, but they are just too rude to post here. Part of it would be the deadpan delivery, but there is no doubt in my mind that we share a common ancestry with apes.

    rustypouch said,

    “Without you, my organ would become vestigial.”

    Ha, I liked that one. Sounds similar to the woe-is-me prostatic congestion excuse: "Baby, save me!"

    Blake Stacey said,

    “Girl, you so fine, you make me want to do a Cambrian explosion between your strata.”

    Oh dear, but that one's pretty good and apt to Darwin. I have a mean comeback making a…ahem…body part comparison to a fossil.

    JackPT said,

    1. “We share a significant amount of DNA with plants. So coming over and introducing myself is a little like giving you a beautiful bunch of flowers.”

    That is so corny I'd spit out my drink! :-)

  21. Hey, I haven't even gotten started on what one can reply to pick-up lines.

    "Sorry, but I'm more into cloning these days."

    "No thanks, I just come to bars for the drinks and the atmosphere, like most people do for churches." Or, the Danielle Dennett version: "I don't really believe in sex. I just believe in belief in sex."

    "Cool it, boy. My genes aren't into selfishness."

  22. Sheesh, these are all to complex for me, I'm gonna go with:

    "Wanna have my babies?"

    and then _if_ the reply is no:

    "Good thing we've invented condoms then."

    Okay, there's very little Darwin in that.

  23. astrogirl2100 said,

    Why not combine the whole thing with Single Awareness Day (which is either the 14th or the 15th depending on who you ask)?

    More aptly, they should call it "Committment Phobic Day."

    Some men are simply more evolved than others. :-/

  24. Some of us prefer to think of our state as "commitment to solitude."

    "I'll tell you what I know, then," he decided. "The pin I'm wearing means I'm a member of the IA. That's Inamorati Anonymous. An inamorato is somebody in love. That's the worst addiction of all."

    "Somebody is about to fall in love," Oedipa said, "you go sit with them, or something?"

    "Right. The whole idea is to get where you don't need it. I was lucky. I kicked it young. But there are sixty-year-old men, believe it or not, and women even older, who wake up in the night screaming."

    "You hold meetings, then, like the AA?"

    "No, of course not. You get a phone number, an answering service you can call. Nobody knows anybody else's name; just the number in case it gets so bad you can't handle it alone. We're isolates, Arnold. Meetings would destroy the whole point of it."

    Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49 (1965)

  25. Good thinking, Blake, I'm familiar with that excerpt.

    Jack, that's funny:

    Put simply, Skeletor is pure evil. He's so evil in fact, that the only love interest he was ever seen with was called Evil Lynn – if this doesn't prove his commitment to evil to you, you should check out his wikipedia article.

    Hey, Evelyn, are you evil? :-)

    Off to training…this thread is humorous, so I printed it out in case I get bored and need a laugh.

  26. As a non-commitment phobic perennially single male, I applaud Singles Awareness Day. However, as a child of the 80s, I must applaud St. Skeletor's day with far greater vigor.

    But I think my favored holiday is Day-After-Valentine's-Day, which is the day of 50% off chocolates merely because they come in a heart-shaped box. I have no shame in purchasing as much of that kind of candy, merely for my own enjoyment, as possible.

    And as for a pick-up line:

    'What do you say we go back to Castle Greyskull so's I can spend ALL NIGHT showing you that I have the power??'

  27. Blake: I spend most of my time dating rocks… which explains my lack of social life…

    Melusine: My sister calls me Evil Lynn, actually. I call her Painsley.

  28. Expatria, Day-After-St.-Valentine's has always ranked high in my personal hagiography of holy days. I'm hard pressed to think of a chocolate I met and didn't like. And Evelyn, I'm sure it's just because men know they can't handle the competition.

    More lines:

    "Hey, why don't we dig down," I said, "peel off some layers and find your K-T boundary."

    To which she replied, "Do I look like my geological clock is ticking?"

  29. 'Hey baby, wanna simulate a deep impact? I'll be the meteor, you can be the Yucatan, and I think we both know where to find the Chicxulub Crater'

    Not Darwinian, I know, but STILL.

    'You+ME+Bed= Evolutionarily stable strategy"

    Blake, glad to see I'm not the only guy out there who has to answer semi-awkward questions about why he has so many heart-shaped choco boxes sitting around :-P

  30. The initial formulation of this challenge was unfairly vague: Darwin himself knew nothing about DNA, yet Rebecca invoked DNA in a purportedly Darwinian pick-up line. Where exactly are we drawing the demarcation boundary? And hey, that gives me an idea:

    "If I'm natural selection and you're genetics, what say we go and make a little Neo-Darwinian synthesis?"

  31. Here's to coming in late (I was naturally selected against?)

    – The question of non-commitment phobic perennially single male has already been answered by one of the at least three or four of us that haunt this blog.

    – The anti-single-ness of Valentines day has already been adressed.

    – Someone already pointed out the Evil-Lyn reference in St. Skeletor's day.

    So what's left? Darwinian pick-up lines? What a waste. No matter what verbal utterances depart your mouth, it's pretty much to no avail as she's already made up her mind when she saw you walking over. In theory anyway. But for the sake of argument, and since we're dealing with skepchicks who at least claim to value mental ability as much (or more) as other aspects, let's try a few lines …

    For starters, I think any line beginning with "hey baby …" should lose by default for using the wrong noun to adress the girl in question.

    How about:

    I know you're probably thinking "what an ass" when hearing my pick-up line, but remember survival of the fittest, you should not reject me on first appearances, since I am the fittest and will walk out of here with you. You wouldn't reject science, would you?

    *sigh*

    I guess all the funny and lame ones regarding DNA have already been done.

    I resign myself to being the guy that doesn't get to procreate and moves the human race one step closer to extinction.

  32. "You know, penis size has increased due to natural selection. Wanna see the end result?"

    So simple yet unsiad:

    "Whoa! Nice Galapogos!"

    Or "I would love to explore your Galapogos with my Beagle!"

  33. Personally, I think some of Blake Stacey's are the best lines. And that's no fair because I believe he also won the Rebecca's Box contest. :(

  34. Rebecca: "You, and you – fight to the death. I shall select genetic material from the winner"

    The winner:"I…. I have won, although I'm losing blood rather quickly. Shall I furnish you with a test tube filled with my gametes before I pass out?"

    Rebecca: "Ok, ta."

    later on…

    Rebecca: "You two girls. fight to the death. The winner will recieve the contents of this test tube…"

  35. "get yer coat love, you've selected the mate with a pheremone odour that suggests that he has a suitably dissimilar immune system to your own for the purposes of procreation, thus allowing our offspring to benefit from the diversity of their parent's genotype."

  36. A more evolved version of my original entry:

    Rebecca. You cause selective pressure in my pants. How about we split – leave these Neanderthals behind?

  37. "Ok… so which of these vibrators is going to give the best value for money… the one that will survive the longest?"

    "They're all pretty good… I really couldn't tell you."

    "Look. This may mean nothing to you, but I have seen the future. How can we expect the Borg to evolve in the 24th century if there's no selective pressure in the 21st?"

  38. "Did you hurt yourself when you fell from heaven?"

    "I said, Did you hurt yourself when you… No, sorry, I think she's dead."

    "Ah hah. Now did _you_ hurt yourself when you fell from heaven?"

  39. I'll repeat that, I think it didn't like some of my formatting:

    “Did you hurt yourself when you fell from heaven?”

    “I said, Did you hurt yourself when you… No, sorry, I think she’s dead.”

    (sound of a body falling from the sky)

    “Ah hah. Now did _you_ hurt yourself when you fell from heaven?”

  40. He says:

    I just saw you from across the room. No, please, don’t leave. Let me say something. I can tell we’re just a couple of survivors, you and me, and soon his moment will pass. But before it does, I want to give you something that is a also a survivor, because what’s in this this glass has survived millions of years just for this moment.

    I’m talking about survival of the fittest. That’s real survival. Real, like you me. And real the way Charles Darwin knew it. Yeah, I’m talking Darwinism, baby; evolution, because there’s no hiding the truth. The hops, the barley the yeast: these didn’t just appear spontaneously; they’re the results of millions of years of selective pressures. But I’m not about pressure. I’d just like to sit with you. I see you’ve put away your mace. Thank you. What a lovely smile you have.

    He means:

    You’ll like me a lot better when you’re drunk.

  41. Thanks Joshua. I was cracking myself up over that one. I'm a little sleep deprived, so I don't know if it's as funny as it sounds in my head, but I had to share.

    :)

    Blake really has some good ones up there.

    "…finch in your pocket.."

    Still crackin' me up.

  42. lol it's totally late but whatever, I just caught this line today and needed to leave something. :3

    If I were a protein I'd be DNA helicase so I can unzip your genes.

    (Not Darwin or genetics related but still funny, they're all more chemistry related.)

    What does it take to get over your activation barrier?

    If hope you have lab today because I want to polish your stirring rod.

    You must be a benzene ring because you're so aromatic!

    lol, tha's it. XD

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