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from the if-your-parents-didn't-have-children,-then-you-probably-won't,-either dept.
Monogamy may have a telltale signature of gene activity
In the animal world, monogamy has some clear perks. Living in pairs can give animals some stability and certainty in the constant struggle to reproduce and protect their young—which may be why it has evolved independently in various species. Now, an analysis of gene activity within the brains of frogs, rodents, fish, and birds suggests there may be a pattern common to monogamous creatures. Despite very different brain structures and evolutionary histories, these animals all seem to have developed monogamy by turning on and off some of the same sets of genes.
"It is quite surprising," says Harvard University evolutionary biologist Hopi Hoekstra, who was not involved in the new work. "It suggests that there's a sort of genomic strategy to becoming monogamous that evolution has repeatedly tapped into."
Conserved transcriptomic profiles underpin monogamy across vertebrates (DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1813775116) (DX)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 08 2019, @02:26PM (15 children)
my impression is that human males are naturally monogamous for a period of time long enough to raise a couple of kids to puberty, as long as the mother is still sexually available to them. and then various cultural/intellectual things happen on top of that basic drive.
I'm not sure whether this should count as monogamy as the term applies to the animal kingdom, where it means "mate for life": several generations of kids born and raised over the lifetime of the parents.
I do wonder what the percentage of men is, who would maintain several relationships at the same time (as long as it was socially acceptable and financially possible).
did anyone count the various multiple wife households in the different cultures that allow them? There's the muslims and some parts of non-muslim Africa, but I'm not sure about other places.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Tuesday January 08 2019, @05:24PM (5 children)
The idea that animal monogamy is perfect is the result of wishful thinking combined with imperfect observation. Genetic studies have shown that it isn't. (So did many observational studies that people tended to ignore.)
Perfection is not a feature of the world above the quantum level...and who knows about below it.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Immerman on Tuesday January 08 2019, @07:10PM (4 children)
Therein lies the distinction between social monogamy (long-term pair-bonding, common in many species) and sexual monogamy (not practiced by any species)
The problem occurs when an intellectual takes animal takes their bias for the former as as evidence of the desirability of the latter.
Of course, that's rather putting the cart before the horse - sexual monogamy was never promoted because it was "natural", it was promoted because it contributed to social stability, and thus the amount of wealth that a community of a given size could generate for its masters.
The more time young working age men spend competing to secure mating rights, the less they spend contributing to the community, and the greater the risk that a valuably productive individual will be injured or killed by a relatively useless rival.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 08 2019, @09:25PM (3 children)
octopus
praying mantis
black widow
naked mole rat
honeybee
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday January 09 2019, @04:13AM (2 children)
You might want to do a little more research into those before you make such ridiculous claims...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 09 2019, @05:40AM (1 child)
Anglerfish?
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday January 09 2019, @07:17PM
Some species do fall pretty close to the "permanently incorporated into her body" model that a few animals practice, since the males rapidly atrophy to the point that they can't survive independently any longer. Not really monogamy though, as a single female may host several mates. (though I suppose the males are monogamous, at least so long as the female doesn't swim near other spawning females)
Lets make it at least a little challenging though - the "permanently fused bodies" model crops up in several places, and obviously seriously limits further mating potential. But we're talking behavioral monogamy, so lets limit the search to species where both genders maintain the physical capability of mating with a different partner.
(Score: 3, Funny) by bob_super on Tuesday January 08 2019, @05:54PM (8 children)
A lot of cultures allow/tolerate polygamy. Sometimes for the elites but not for the poor.
A lot of people in cultures that don't, still practice it, without the paperwork or the permanency.
Our closest genetic cousins the apes almost all practice polygamy (or, for the bonobos, "everything goes"), and group child-raising.
We have assets and successions, and in the Western World have settled on rules that it's better overall to enforce monogamy and frown on polygamy.
Even if it mostly works, I'm not convinced that's the ultimate answer.
Some nice topic to discuss with my mistress.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Tuesday January 08 2019, @07:36PM (7 children)
The biggest problem I see with with polygamy, especially in the male-dominated societies of the last many centuries, is that formal forms tends to be unilateral - one male with several females. Which inherently means that for every such male, there are several males with *no* females - and with reproduction rights being the instinctual meaning of life, that's a MAJOR problem. A seething mass of social instability just waiting to bring things down.
The obvious alternatives to monogamy are to either promote balanced polygamous relationships, with similar numbers of husbands and wives in a relationship (which gets complicated by exponential network effects - a 3-person marriage has 3x as many 1-on-1 individual relationships to manage, a 4 person marriage has 6x), or to promote unilateral relationships in the other direction as well - though I'm not sure that one woman with several men adequately addresses the male reproductive drive.
Or we could just divorce the idea of marriage from sexual fidelity entirely. Get over this recent cultural delusion that sex should be restricted to the confines of marriage. Expect infidelity, rather than considering it a betrayal of an unnatural sacred trust. It wasn't so very long ago that it was assumed that love (and sex) would be found primarily outside of marriage, as expressed in many old truisms such as "The man who marries for love will have warm nights and cold days."
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday January 08 2019, @07:58PM (6 children)
> there are several males with *no* females
That small problem has typically been solved by sending men off to do dangerous jobs, or to war.
We've gotten soft. even good ol' human sacrifices are frowned upon, just because we don't have as many spare children and slaves as we used to.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Tuesday January 08 2019, @08:40PM (5 children)
Also very suboptimal, as it means all the resources required to raise such "canon fodder" to adulthood were basically wasted. It also means throwing away a substantial fraction of your nation's potential productivity just so a few men can have harems.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday January 08 2019, @08:46PM (2 children)
Not really wasted, if the cannon fodder allows both the harems and more territory for the harem owners.
It's all a matter of perspective, really.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday January 09 2019, @07:28PM (1 child)
Only if the harem-masters contribute more to society than all the "cannon fodder" they displaced would have. In practice that's almost certainly not the case, especially not in capitalist societies where your wealth (and ability to support a harem) has very little relationship to your actual contributions.
Plus, you hint on another probable problem with societies that practice unidirectional harem arrangements - they tend to involve the enslavement of women. Not always, perhaps, but often enough that the massive loss of productivity by women is worth considering, even if you don't care about the morality: slaves make for singularly non-productive labor, little better than robots. (in fact, robot comes from the Czech word "robota" meaning "forced labor")
Of course, I get the feeling you're just playing the line of "hur, dur, I want a harem", when statistically speaking you would almost certainly be either canon fodder, or one of the men who can only get a single wife of substantially lower quality than you might otherwise attain, since the rich men almost certainly buy (one way or another) their many wives from the top of the pool, lowering the standards for everyone else.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday January 09 2019, @08:02PM
Indeed, my cheek is sore from excessive tongue friction.
The people interested and able to procure and maintain harems are not typically hindered by considerations about their probable impact on overall societal contributions of the individuals involved.
(Score: 2) by shortscreen on Tuesday January 08 2019, @09:10PM (1 child)
Productivity or harems. Which would you choose?
How much more defense spending and spreading democracy do we need before we get harems?
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday January 09 2019, @07:34PM
Since it's almost certain that neither of us are going to be the ones with harems? Productivity. No question. I like getting laid.
The thing about harems is that only a tiny percentage of the population can have them - heck, limit harem size to a tiny 3, and you still end up with 2/3rds of men going without. And the reality is that a wealthy man can probably support dozens, if not hundreds of women in his harem (50-100 women was not uncommon for the harems of kings of old, and wealth inequality has increased substantially since then).