Re: Another beloved meme bites the dust

On Thu, 8 Jun 2006 09:57:06 -0500, "Harry Thompson" <me@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

extracted from
Jerold Lowenstein, "Can This Pair Bond Be Saved?" California Wild:
The Magazine of the California Academy of Sciences, Winter 1998,
http://www.calacademy.org/calwild/1998Winter/stories/counterpoints.html

Read the whole article, it's pretty humorous.

Hap
=================================

Monogamy, originally defined as a long-term social and sexual relationship
between one female and one male, is an unusual mating system in vertebrates.
Males of most species irresponsibly take off right after insemination, often
to look for other mating opportunities. The conspicuous exception among
vertebrate phyla has traditionally been the birds, held up as models of
fidelity and marital bliss, and of female-male cooperation in bringing up
the young. Either male or female or both may build the nest, forage for
food, or incubate the eggs. In many species of birds, the same male and
female are seen socializing and procreating together each mating season
until death do them part.

The shockeroo came about ten years ago when DNA fingerprinting was first
applied to several "monogamous" species such as the indigo bunting and
red-winged blackbird. Although careful field observations had failed to spot
any deviation from a strict pair bond, the minisatellites told a terrible
tale. One-third of the offspring of these closely bonded species had been
fathered by males other than the mate--often a nearby neighbor!

Indeed, according to Luis Baptista at the California Academy of Sciences,
DNA fingerprinting or blood protein studies have revealed that some 70-80
percent of socially monogamous songbirds have engaged in extramarital
affairs and produced illegitimate offspring.

A female house sparrow can be a veritable hussy. Several observers have
reported seeing female sparrows soliciting copulation with tails pointing
upward and wings drooped down and quivering. The males line up like tomcats.
A husband, returning to this disgraceful scene, drives off the rival males.
He then massages her cloaca with his bill until she ejects the accumulated
sperm, and then copulates with her himself.

These revelations stunned the hundreds of ornithologists who had logged in
countless hours of birdwatching and somehow missed the crucial trysts
(primly referred to as "extra-pair copulations" or EPCs) that must have been
going on all the time right under their binoculars. This gross oversight
demonstrates the truism that we tend to see what we expect to see and often
screen out data that doesn't match expectations. It's hard to avoid the
suspicion that the supposedly monogamous bird partnership was a projection
of the idealized human nuclear family.

The finding of female infidelity in so many bird species was particularly
disconcerting for the growing cadres of evolutionary theorists who try to
explain in mathematical terms why it is that living organisms do the things
they do, especially in the arenas of sex and reproduction. Female
hanky-panky yanked the cornerstone out of their carefully erected house of
cards.



Yep. Optimal evolutionary strategy is different for males than for
females. The female's investment is the eggs she has to grow
inside herself. She wants a husband who's well in tow to help
take care of the kids, and who think her kids are his kids.
However, she also wants what she thinks is the best sperm
around, which probably isn't, in her estimate, her husband's. The
male has only a minuscule amount of effort to put into fertilizing
a female, so he'll be ready to go just about anytime a strange
female shows interest.

 
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom: it is the
argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves" -- Wm. Pitt the Younger
.