Promiscuity: Difference between revisions

*The relatively small midpiece of human sperm required (comparable to the Gorilla) which indicates a monogamous mating system as larger midpieces are found in promiscuous mating systems<ref>https://www.researchgate.net/publication/11432422_Sperm_competition_-_Motility_and_the_midpiece_in_primates?_sg=Iu7eEJDjjOdBrvQqWOSdwB5n71Gimq72v9sJRBeA_XLXlgFdgf0lXwaNPtCdZ3gbuqsa0zpKDzJ4qjI</ref><ref>https://www.researchgate.net/publication/231916755_Sperm_competition_and_the_evolution_of_sperm_midpiece_volume_in_mammals</ref>; specifically the human sperm midpiece has 15 mitochondria, much less than what can be found in the chimpanzee.<ref>https://www.researchgate.net/publication/18950923_Biology_of_primate_spermatozoa</ref><ref>https://www.researchgate.net/publication/312463724_The_mammalian_spermatozoon_Morphology_biochemistry_and_physiology<br /></ref>

*The Vas Deferens is long and thin in humans (something that is typical of species with low levels of sperm competition)<ref>https://www.researchgate.net/publication/229542547_Sperm_competition_affects_the_structure_of_the_mammalian_vas_deferens?_sg=8WQpAetxLid6-Nzl3Iuslmh-FB2fyO-HmmeWyvHEIZQITncEEr_2CNFCCkNFTZi5mhSoPY8X7fI26VY</ref>

Evidence for it (with counter-arguments):

*In the Himba tribe of Nigeria women who cuckold their husbands by having children with other men are more reproductively successful than those who don't (somewhere between 17%-48% of children are not sired by their fathers as compared to the low rate of extra pair paternity of 3% in western countries).<ref>https://www.researchgate.net/publication/51471838_Female_choice_and_extra-pair_paternity_in_a_traditional_human_population</ref>

**Know whilsts this is certainly interisting to look at, it is unlikely that the conditions that allow women whom cuckold their husbands in the Himba tribe are widespread. For one, men are aware whose children are genetically their and those whom aren't (they are reffered to as 'omaka') and both women and men regularly engage in adultery (seemingly openly). The reason why the women whom cuckold their husbands enjoy greater greater reproductive success is two fold. Firstly favouring genetic children over omaka is genrally frowned upon, this is the exception rather than the rule when it comes to how men deal with children in humans. Almost no other culture in history would condemn a man for favouring his own children over other children; the only modern exception to this would be regressive France that criminilized paternity tests. Secondly the actual fathers of the omaka often give food to the women they've had children with. So the greater reproductive success essentially comes from the fact that women recieve resources from both their husbands and lovers and would thus have healthier children and lower mortality rates. Finally when a man dies, his sister inherits his possessions not his children; this essentially lowers the cost of him being cuckolded by other men as he invests less into his children. Interisting to note that most marriages in the Himba are arranged (the women have no say) and that 'love matches' (marriages were the women has married for love) experienced lower rates of extra-pair paternity. Now whilst it might be interisting to study, it would be fallacious to assume that simply because this one tribe that displays a chimpanzee like mating system therefore ancestral females were promiscuos, they were not. The genetic and morphological presented above opposing rampant female promiscuity is reflective of millions of years of evolution and is a ''far'' better indicator of what ancestral females were like.

==References==