{"id":189361,"date":"2025-12-18T03:35:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-18T03:35:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/189361\/"},"modified":"2025-12-18T03:35:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-18T03:35:10","slug":"an-anthropologist-made-a-mammal-monogamy-scale-heres-where-humans-rank-sciencealert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/189361\/","title":{"rendered":"An Anthropologist Made a Mammal ‘Monogamy Scale’. Here’s Where Humans Rank. : ScienceAlert"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sticking with a long-term life partner to rear children has long been considered a dominant mating pattern<\/a> for our species, although reproductive monogamy is not universal across our many cultures and subcultures.<\/p>\n

Now, a new study by Cambridge evolutionary anthropologist Mark Dyble ranks Homo sapiens among the top 10 mammal monogamists, using sibling status (full or half) as a proxy for comparing monogamy’s prevalence across a range of species.<\/p>\n

“There is a premier league of monogamy, in which humans sit comfortably, while the vast majority of other mammals take a far more promiscuous approach to mating,” Dyble says<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In fact, humans scored seventh place, with 66 percent of offspring coming from the same two parents, on average.<\/p>\n

Related: We Now Have The Largest Ever Human ‘Family Tree’, With 231 Million Ancestral Lineages<\/a><\/p>\n

Dyble assessed the distribution of half or full siblings across more than 100 human societies and compared it with equivalent data from 34 other mammal species.<\/p>\n

While his method is still only a proxy for reproductive monogamy, Dyble argues<\/a> it’s a more direct way of gauging patterns of monogamy across a spectrum of species and human societies than previous methods.<\/p>\n

The human data came from ancient DNA collected from nine different archaeological sites across Europe and Asia (mostly dated to the Neolithic<\/a> and Bronze Age<\/a>), and from family trees ethnographers had compiled for 94 pre-industrial human societies.<\/p>\n

For the other animals, Dyble rounded up a list of mammal species for which recent genetic data had already been collected with enough detail to show things like reproductive skew<\/a> (where certain individuals might contribute more to reproduction than others) and kinship composition<\/a> (the structure of a related family group).<\/p>\n

The most monogamous creature of the bunch was, perhaps surprisingly, a rodent<\/a>, the California deermouse (Peromyscus californicus<\/a>), with 100 percent full siblings.<\/p>\n

\"closeThe California deermouse, unlike most other rodents, is strictly monogamous. (NNehring\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Across the human societies included in the study, both pre-industrial<\/a> and prehistoric, 66 percent of siblings shared the same parents, on average.<\/p>\n

That’s comparable to the rates seen in the study’s 10 other socially monogamous mammal species that prefer to parent in long-term partnerships, such as meerkats and Eurasian beavers.<\/p>\n

“The finding that human rates of full siblings overlap with the range seen in socially monogamous mammals lends further weight to the view that monogamy is the dominant mating pattern for our species,” Dyble says<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"aLove is free for chimpanzees. (Andreas Last\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

We outranked many of our closest primate relatives, however: Mountain gorillas (Gorilla beringei beringei<\/a>) had a full sibling rate of just 6 percent; chimpanzees, only 4 percent \u2013 a level of non-monogamy on par with the notoriously promiscuous dolphins<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Three macaque species also sit near the bottom of the list.<\/p>\n

“Based on the mating patterns of our closest living relatives, such as chimpanzees and gorillas, human monogamy probably evolved<\/a> from non-monogamous group living, a transition that is highly unusual<\/a> among mammals,” says<\/a> Dyble.<\/p>\n

\"Subscribe<\/a><\/p>\n

Of course, sharing the same set of parents with your siblings doesn’t quite account for the many forms of non-monogamy humans and other animals are capable of.<\/p>\n

DNA records don’t account for sexual encounters that do not result in a child, and genealogical studies are limited to the information people choose to record, which may not have included their mistresses or illegitimate children. On the flip side, more detailed records may have been kept in cultures where polygamy is acceptable and enshrined.<\/p>\n

“In most mammals, mating and reproduction are tightly linked. In humans, birth control methods and cultural practices break that link,” Dyble says<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“Humans have a range of partnerships that create conditions for a mix of full and half-siblings with strong parental investment, from serial monogamy to stable polygamy.”<\/p>\n

Peruse the full list below.<\/p>\n

Dyble’s ‘monogamy league’
\nCalifornia deermouse (100 percent full siblings)
\nAfrican wild dog (85 percent full siblings)
\nDamaraland mole rat (79.5 percent full siblings)
\nMoustached Tamarin (77.6 percent full siblings)
\nEthiopian wolf (76.5 percent full siblings)
\nEurasian beaver (72.9 percent full siblings)
\nHumans (66 percent full siblings)
\nLar (white-handed) gibbon (63.5 percent full siblings)
\nMeerkat (59.9 percent full siblings)
\nGrey wolf (46.2 percent full siblings)
\nRed fox (45.2 percent full siblings)
\nBlack rhinoceros (22.2 percent full siblings)
\nEuropean badger (19.6 percent full siblings)
\nAfrican lion (18.5 percent full siblings)
\nLong-tailed macaque (18.1 percent full siblings)
\nFeral cat (16.2 percent full siblings)
\nBanded mongoose (15.9 percent full siblings)
\nRock wallaby (14.3 percent full siblings)
\nRingtailed coati (12.6 percent full siblings)
\nSpotted hyena (12 percent full siblings)
\nEastern chipmunk (9.6 percent full siblings)
\nWhite-faced capuchin (8.5 percent full siblings)
\nMountain gorilla (6.2 percent full siblings)
\nOlive baboons (4.8 percent full siblings)
\nCommon chimpanzee (4.1 percent full siblings)
\nBottlenose dolphin (4.1 percent full siblings)
\nVervet monkey (4 percent full siblings)
\nSavannah baboon (3.7 percent full siblings)
\nKiller whale (3.3 percent full siblings)
\nAntarctic fur seal (2.9 percent full siblings)
\nBlack bear (2.6 percent full siblings)
\nJapanese macaque (2.3 percent full siblings)
\nRhesus Macaque (1.1 percent full siblings)
\nCelebes crested macaque (0.8 percent full siblings)
\nSoay sheep (0.6 percent full siblings)<\/p>\n

The research was published in Proceedings of the Royal Society of London Biological Sciences.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sticking with a long-term life partner to rear children has long been considered a dominant mating pattern for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":189362,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[1021,111,139,69,147,406],"class_list":{"0":"post-189361","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-msft-content","9":"tag-new-zealand","10":"tag-newzealand","11":"tag-nz","12":"tag-science","13":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189361","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=189361"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189361\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/189362"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}