How monogamous are humans, really? It’s an age-old question subject to significant debate. Now a University of Cambridge professor has an answer: Somewhere between the Eurasian beaver and a meerkat. That’s according to a new study in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society: Biological Sciences, which ranks human beings against other mammals in a “premier league of monogamy,” a reference to England’s top soccer teams. Mark Dyble, assistant professor in evolutionary anthropology at Cambridge, said he used a “theoretically salient, but relatively overlooked” approach of analyzing genetic data to determine the proportion of full and half-siblings born into a population to determine how monogamous it is.
Though his results showed considerable variety among human societies, they lend weight overall to the theory that monogamous mating is a “core human characteristic” that has helped us establish the intricate and vast co-operative groups that are “crucial to our success as a species,” Dyble wrote.
More here.
