I’m not trying to be snarky, but that’s just a fancy way of saying your post is your cite. I was wondering if you could cite some credentialed primatologists who disagree with de Waal as he laid out the case in the book I referenced.* It seems odd that someone as well respected as de Waal would propogate a debunked theory.
Or, did you mean that claiming testes size, in and of itself, can determine mating paterns has been debunked? If so, I’m not sure any biologists ever claimed that. The claim, as I understand it, is that testes size can be one indicator of sexual behavior and that when used with other physical features can tell us about the sexual practices of primates. Are there any non-human primates whose sexual behavior does not correlate with measureable bodily features? If not, it would seem reasonable to assume that humans would not either.
*sorry I can’t link to the book but it’s readily available in libraries and bookstores.
Not really. It might be just strong evidence that humans are fairly tolerant.
And that’s the whole problem. Humans are adaptable. We will do almost anything. As a result we can’t really say that any voluntary behaviour is strong evidence of anything much.
The fact that human populations tolerate polygamy could certainly be used as evidence for polygamy as the biological state, though not strong evidence. But we could equally use the fact that even in such populations the vast majority of individuals are mongamous as evidence that we are biolgically monogamous. The minority of individuals who choose to be polygamous are abberations. If you wanted to you could probably compare the incidence of polygamy with the incidence of cancer within these societies, and you will probably find more people with cancer than with multiple spouses. That doesn’t mean that humans are biologically ‘meant’ to get cancer. It means that the genes of many people screw up. Sometimes that causes cancer, sometimes it causes polygamy. Neither abberation is a biological state.
Once again the exact came evidence can be used to consctruct an equally compelling case for both sides.
IMO the most compelling evidence would be if we could ascertain that absent father leads to ealier menarche and earlier sexual activity in girls. That would be strong evidence that polygamy is at least an option biologically.
That doesn’t quite work. If human beings were really innately monogamous, we would expect to see them conforming, by and large, to monogamy. The abscence of that is very compelling.
But again, that doesn’t quite work. If we are highly adaptable, then we are clearly NOT innately inclined towards monogamy. If all our sexual habits are voluntarily and unconnected to biology, this sort of freewheeling is certainly not going to end up with monogamy as its central story. And, in fact, it doesn’t seem to.
But the opposite is true. Human beings by and large have multiple sexual partners throughout their lives, and cheating is rampant. When systematic genetic testing is done of various communities, the number of fathers who turn out not to be genetically related to what they thought were their children is shockingly high. The fact that we sometimes stick with partners for longer terms is in general the abberation, not the rule. And the fact that the vast majority of known ancient civilizations were not monogamous but in fact polygamous (especially coupled with the fact that polyandry is vanishingly rare: we may be “adaptable” but our adaptations seem pretty darn skewed in one direction) again tells the story of human prolicilivity, not life-long pair bonding. At the very most, I could see a case to be made that humans are in general serially monogamous. Sort of.
Yeah. I’ll see if I can dig up the specific references debunking Morris’ use of the data. I’ve included a reference below showing that it doesn’t work for great apes in general. Morris only got the fit he did by restricting his samples to African great apes, which is one of many criticisms levelled at his work.
Sure. Body mass for example is a measurable body feature, and it doesn’t correlate well to sexual behaviour at all. Gibbons are monogamous and smaller then bonobo which are highly promiscuous while bonobo are smaller then chimps and much smaller than gorillas, yet more promiscuous than either of them.
in such a way that only one answer is possible.
Now if you were to ask a question such as “Are there any non-human primates whose sexual behaviour does not correlate testicle size” then I could answer. And the answer is a resounding yes. The Orangutan is the most obvious example, and being a fellow great ape is also the most valid comparison. The fact that Morris refused to include such an obvious outlier has been one of the main criticisms of his work.
In relation body weight orangutan males have testicles twice as large as the gorilla. Yet Gorilla males are only responsible for 1/2 - 1/5th of matings with the females in their troupe. In contrast female orangs have very rarely been observed in the wild to mate with more than one male in a cycle. According to sexual behaviour we would expect the Orang to have smaller testicles than the gorilla.
The authors of the article above point out that “The differences between the ratios for a monogamous gibbon species, orang-utans, and humans is accounted for when testicle size relative to the weight of the female is considered”. But the gorilla testicle size then becomes even more anomalous.
Not only that but once we can start ‘accounting’ for differences based on additional factors like female size we start practicing very bad science. Why ‘account’ based on female size rather than protein intake, troupe size, air temperature, activity level or any of a million other plausible factors? The only answer I can see is that we don’t account that way because if we do testicle size no longer correlates with polygamy. IOW we have started selecting the observations we use in order to fit out theory, rather than simply seeing whether the theory fits the observations.
But I guess the facts speak for themselves. Amongst the great apes the testicle size alone does not correlate at all well to the incidence of multiple male pairings. It correlates passably if we if we also factor in female body size, except that gorillas fit even less well. There is simply no justification in saying that testicle size correlates to sexual behaviour amongst all great apes. At best we can say that it correlates for the great apes if gorillas are specifically excluded.
It wouldn’t be reasonable at all IMO, for the reasons I went into above. Humans are not in any way a typical primate. The simple fact that our testicles are confined between the thighs rather than swinging freely in the breeze is all by itself sufficient to make any such assumption unreasonable. We might just as reasonably conclude that since canine length correlate well to male-male aggression in other apes, and since humans have such reduced canines we must have very limited aggression. It’s not reasonable because human posture doesn’t allow it to be reasonable.
I’m sure I could find a dozen factors that correlate really well amongst other primates that completely fall to pieces when applied to humans body mass and age at menarche? That correlates well for the other primates. But does that make it reasonable to apply it to humans? How about body mass and percent animal protein in the diet? Age at weaning and age of dominance for alpha males?
Nah, humans are too bizarre and atypical for comparison drawn with other primates to be reasonable.
That’s precisely my point. We do see humans conforming by and large to monogamy. Very few humans are or ever have been in polygamous relationships.
Well you’re right, but it seems like a trivial semantic observation. Using precisely the same semantics I can argue that humans are biologically meant to fly. And by the semantic argument it would be correct. But I doubt many people would agree with you if you said it.
“If we are highly adaptable and prone to tool use, then we are clearly NOT innately inclined towards remaining on the ground. If all our transport habits are voluntarily and unconnected to biology, this sort of freewheeling is certainly not going to end up with ground travel as its central story.”
All perfectly true, and all perfectly banal. Ask me if humans are biologically meant to fly and I will say we are not.
Well, no. That is your opinion. It might even be true in the modern western world. But it’s impossible to prove historically. And of course if you are going to base your case on the single data point of modern western culture then the opposition can select the single data point of modern Amish culture and say exactl;ythe opposite.
A contention that human beings by and large have multiple sexual partners throughout their lives, and cheating is rampant is an opinion. It is not a fact with the possible of exception if you are specifically referring to one culture at one point in time.
No, it isn’t. I know you can not provide single reference to support that claim because I’ve researched it before. You have misunderstood the research.
When systematic genetic testing is done the number of fathers who turn out not to be genetically related with whom they identify with as father is moderately high. Such research however has been unable to get around the problem of self-selecting samples and the issues of adoption.
Of course if you can provide a reference for research that says what you claim I would be very interested to see it. But I am certain that you will find when you read it that the men simply self-identified as father. Not that they claimed paternity. Those are two very different things.
And if you have any evidence of such test conducted outside of modern western culture at all I would be even more interested in seeing it.
Once again, that is your opinion. It isn’t based in fact.
And as I pointed out above, it tells us no such thing. All it tells us is that the vast majority of cultures were tolerant. The vast majority of ancient civilizations were just as much homosexual as they were polygamous. In both cases the societies tolerated such relationships but never mandated them. Using your argument we would have to conclude that the story of human proclivity is for homosexuality.
If you love straw men so much, why don’t you have sex with them?
No, but we can conclude pretty reasonably that humans are not innately or uniformly heterosexual in their sexual behaviors. Remember, it’s monogamy that’s the extreme.
Once again though this appears to be a trivial and banal observation that is completely unenlightening.
I’m getting the impression that you interpret “Are we biologically predisposed to lifelong monogamy?” completely differently to everyone else in this thread. You seem to be arguing that if one in every thousand people will adopt a polygamous lifstyle when it is offered then such a lifestyle must be something we are biologically predisposed to.
I contend that it is just as valid to take exactly the opposite view. If only one in every thousand people will adopt a polygamous lifstyle even when it is offered then such a lifestyle must be someting we are not biologiclaly predisposed to but rather the result of conscious choice overriding biological predisposition.
Let me put it like this, if only 1 in every thousand people will eat human faeces as part of their sexual parctices, even when the option is freely offered, would that be evidence that coprophagy is something we are biologically predisposed to? Or would it be evidence that some people choose to engage in such behaviour in conflict with normal biological predisposition?
I am assuming here that you will argue that it is evidence that humans are not innately or uniformly non-coprophagic in their sexual behaviors and that therefore humans are biologically predisposed towards coprophagia.
It’s certainly a POV, and given the nebulous nature of ‘biologically predisposed’ I have to concede that it’s not actually incorrect. I simply contend that when the man-in-the-street speaks of biological predisposition he does not mean ‘not universally biologically repelled by’, which is what you seem to mean.
