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Why do humans prefer to mate in private?
Anecdotal evidence suggests that human beings generally prefer to mate in private—but why? And why is it so rare? Other than humans, only one other species has demonstrated a preference for privacy during mating: Arabian babblers. To learn more, [anthropologist Yitzchak] Ben Mocha retrieved data from 4,572 accounts of cultural studies—ethnographies—and studied them looking for what he describes as normal sexual practices. Those involved were not trying to shock or avoid punishment for engaging in taboo practices such as incest—and were also not in the pornography business. He found that virtually every known culture practices private mating—even in places where privacy is difficult to find. He also looked for examples of other animals mating in private, and found none, except for the babblers. He also found that there were no explanations for it, and in fact, there were very few other people wondering why humans have such a proclivity. And, not surprisingly, he was unable to find any evolutionary theories on the topic.
Journal Reference:
Yitzchak Ben Mocha. Why do human and non-human species conceal mating? The cooperation maintenance hypothesis, Proceedings of the Royal Society B (DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2020.1330)
(Score: 5, Informative) by Thexalon on Thursday August 06 2020, @09:02PM (6 children)
Not even remotely accurate:
- In insect species, you frequently have a queen and a bunch of drones that get to mate with her.
- A lot of species do pair-bonding. And while there is definitely cheating and adults who never mate in pair-bonded species, there are also a substantial number of descendants of the pair-bonded male.
- Quite a few species only get one round of mating by both males and females, which means that there ain't no such thing as an alpha.
- More solitary species like bears pretty much mate with whomever is handy and isn't related.
- Even in species where you think there's 1 alpha getting all the action, in fact a lot of other males mate on the sly, successfully.
Oh yeah, and concept of the "alpha" was developed for wolves, and it turns out the alpha male in a wolf pack is better described as "dad", because the pack consists of him, his mate, and their pups that are too young to venture out on their own.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Immerman on Thursday August 06 2020, @10:47PM (5 children)
With regards to "alpha male" (and the attendant violence) - not only was the concept developed around wolves, it was specifically developed around wolves *in captivity*. When the researcher who created the concept later studied wolves in the wild he realized he had gotten it so wrong that he did his best to eliminate his previous publication. And failed, as the concept had already firmly lodged in the imagination of certain kinds of men.
Lock any animal up with no opportunity to do anything meaningfully productive, and they tend to descend into violent competition for social status. See: prisons and schools.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 07 2020, @05:38AM
> See: prisons and schools.
And Reality TV.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 07 2020, @06:31AM (3 children)
This seems fairly far fetched and conveniently political narrative. However I don't know enough about the origin of the concept of the alpha male to say you are wrong - do you have an authoritative source for this?
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday August 07 2020, @12:22PM
Authoritative? Not offhand. But here's a related article: https://www.mawer.com/the-art-of-boring/blog/the-myth-of-the-alpha-wolf [mawer.com]
With the names and dates provided I'm sure you could track something down if you really care.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 07 2020, @02:24PM
Do you have an alpha male you can ask? You know, a loud talker who knows everything. Real tiny penis.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Thexalon on Friday August 07 2020, @07:38PM
Also relevant here: Your concept of the "alpha male" doesn't apply at all to primates. For instance, chimpanzees definitely have leadership structures, but the leader is frequently the one who is really nice to the other chimps in the group and is good at making friends and sorting out personal disputes, whereas the one who is trying to be the tough guy and likes to fight a lot is often shunned because nobody likes him. And on top of that, the chimps who aren't the leader aren't prevented from mating, the leader just gets more attention than the others.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.