• Hyperreality@kbin.social
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          11 months ago

          Meh. True monogamy is quite rare in mammals.

          Used to think monogamy was very common in birds, but IRC thanks to DNA testing, we now know plenty of baby birds have a different daddy. Ie. they raise the baby together, but they have an open relationship and impregnate/get impregnated by other birds.

          Apparently that’s surprisingly rare in humans.

          • merc@sh.itjust.works
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            11 months ago

            Less that they “have an open relationship” and more that the birds sneak around behind each-other’s backs. Males go off and try to sneakily impregnate other females, females sneak around and try to get impregnated by other males. You find it in apes too.

            • Mario_Dies.wav@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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              11 months ago

              Isn’t this anthropomorphizing, though? Is there evidence that the mates would experience emotional distress if they learned their partners were “cheating” on them?

              Being in a consensually monogamous relationship, I know I would and my husband would, but how much of that is cultural? I’m not really convinced it’s something that’s ubiquitous in the animal kingdom, though if you have a source about this that discredits my (admittedly amateurish) hypothesis, I’d be open to learning more.

      • Schadrach@lemmy.sdf.org
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        10 months ago

        I’d be curious about this claim. There’s pair bonding in other species, and other species that are (mostly) monogamous, but an explicit formal declaration of a monogamous pairing is something that doesn’t happen until you have some kind of culture and by the time we have any kinds of surviving records (even mostly coherent oral traditions) of anything religion already has it claws in a lot of things.