Does it make sense to talk about monogamy in nature?

Many relationships are considered monogamous, especially in Western societies, but not all of them feel identified with this term.

Etymologically, "monogamy" is a Greek word that refers to the act of marrying only once in a lifetime, but the truth is that, in practice, there is a lot of confusion about what its meaning implies and when this term is used. with property.

Even in the scientific field that studies the social behavior of animals, they have been mixing apples and pears when dealing with this matter.

Let's put two voles that live together all their lives united by an emotional bond, but who have sexual relations outside the couple.

Or two solitary fish that reproduce only once in their life and only with the same individual.

Could we consider these animals monogamous?

What are the exact requirements to enter the club?

For much of the 20th century, the scientific community assumed that most birds were monogamous, with 90% of species forming pairs.

It was assumed that the females were faithful and only isolated cases of forced copulation were documented in which another male visited the nest of a mated female and forced her to have sexual relations.

This behavior fit very well with a widely accepted hypothesis: that of parental investment.

According to its defenders, females are more selective than males when it comes to copulating because they have to invest more energy to reproduce.

Thus, it was understood that the females were passive and it was up to the males to actively seek sex.

These ideas were in tune with the concept of women that was held at that time.

For example, Desmond Morris published his influential book

in 1967 , in which he portrays the woman of hunter-gatherer societies as monogamous, happily waiting for her man to return from the hunt to satisfy him sexually.

In fact, according to Morris, the female orgasm had first emerged in humans to strengthen couple bonds.

Dissenting voices soon arose questioning the idea of ​​the submissive and monogamous woman, especially among feminist scientists such as Sara Hardy and Patricia Gowaty.

The latter was dedicated to studying the blue tiles (

), some birds considered monogamous.

In an interview, Gowaty recounts how early in her career, in the 1980s, she realized that females were actively cheating.

“They would get up in the middle of the night and go a mile away,” she says.

When she informed her companions about her, they refused to accept it because that was not how a female should behave.

She did, however, get her research evidence recognized and, in 1984, she published the first paper questioning the sexual passivity of females.

Today it is well known that infidelity is the daily occurrence in bird couples, both by males and females.

Specifically, 11% of the offspring are bastards.

There are several hypotheses that try to explain the evolutionary advantages of a female reproducing with a male who is not her partner.

For example, with this behavior, the female maximizes genetic diversity among her offspring or seizes the opportunity to copulate with a male who may be better endowed than her mate.

Whatever the reason, sexual exclusivity in animals is so rare that scientists have finally chosen to specify that it is social monogamy, which does not have to imply sexual monogamy.

Even so, it is not as simple as differentiating between social and sexual.

If there is so much confusion about it, it is because monogamy is far from being a single characteristic, and, more than a closed menu, it is a menu with a variety of dishes to choose from.

In some species the couple is equally involved in caring for the offspring, while in others it is unequal, some always live together and others intermittently.

There are those that mate for life, but others do so only for a season, some show jealousy and others do not, most have signs of affection, but others only procreate...

Even within primates we find totally opposite cases.

Masoala's forked-eared lemur (

) is a nocturnal primate from Madagascar that forms pairs that live together in the same area.

The males actively defend the territory and the couples are quite stable, normally lasting more than three years.

However, the male and female rarely meet, and when they do, they show little interest, or worse, are not friendly encounters.

Females are dominant and often fight over food, so males avoid conflict.

Their relationship is limited to distant vocalizations and sexual encounters.

Therefore, it is a type of couple in which there is no emotional bond.

This has nothing to do with the monogamy of marmoset monkeys, in which the affective bond is so strong that they have been proposed as a model to study the sentimental ties of humans.

They tend to be together to eat and move around, they attack other individuals that could endanger their bond, they suffer stress when they are separated, they maintain sexual exclusivity, they raise their offspring together and they even sit with their tails intertwined.

This is one of the very few species that meets all the dishes on the menu.

Among humans mating, the variability is as wide as that found in animals.

Some people build their lives together, but they don't keep sexual exclusivity to each other.

Others have all their children with the same individual, but fall in love with more than one person at a time.

There are those who raise their offspring together, but do not have a romantic bond.

In what case can we then speak of monogamy?

Perhaps, to avoid confusion, it is more useful to talk about coexistence, sexual exclusivity, cooperative parenting or love.

You can follow