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Related Concept Videos

Mate Choice01:20

Mate Choice

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Mate choice—the decision about whom to mate with—is a type of natural selection, since animals must reproduce to pass down their genes. Mate choice is also called intersexual selection because the behavior occurs between the sexes.
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Parental Care00:55

Parental Care

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Many animals exhibit parental care behavior, including feeding, grooming, and protecting young offspring. Parental care is universal in mammals and birds, which often have young that are born relatively helpless. Several species of insects and fish, as well as some amphibians, also care for their young.
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Natural Selection and Mating Preferences01:06

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The principle of natural selection posits that organisms better adapted to their environment are more likely to survive and reproduce. This principle is closely intertwined with mating preferences, a key aspect of sexual selection, which evolutionary psychologists believe is driven by instincts to propagate one's genes. Such instincts significantly influence mating behaviors and preferences between genders.
Females, due to their biological roles in conception, pregnancy, and nursing,...
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Synteny and Evolution02:31

Synteny and Evolution

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John H. Renwick first coined the term “synteny” in 1971, which refers to the genes present on the same chromosomes, even if they are not genetically linked. The species with common ancestry tend to show conserved syntenic regions. Therefore, the concept of synteny is nowadays used to describe the evolutionary relationship between species.
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What is a Species?01:17

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Overview
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Altruism01:03

Altruism

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Altruistic behaviors are “unselfish” behaviors—those that help another individual at the expense of the individual carrying out the behavior. Despite the negative consequences for the altruistic animal, these behaviors are thought to have evolved for several reasons.
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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jan 17, 2026

Methods of Pairing and Pair Maintenance of New Zealand White Rabbits Oryctolagus Cuniculus Via Behavioral Ethogram, Monitoring, and Interventions
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Methods of Pairing and Pair Maintenance of New Zealand White Rabbits Oryctolagus Cuniculus Via Behavioral Ethogram, Monitoring, and Interventions

Published on: March 16, 2018

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Human monogamy in mammalian context.

Mark Dyble1

  • 1Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK.

Proceedings. Biological Sciences
|January 15, 2026
PubMed
Summary

Human mating systems show high rates of full siblings, similar to socially monogamous mammals. This suggests monogamy is the typical human mating system, despite cultural variations.

Area of Science:

  • Evolutionary anthropology
  • Behavioral ecology
  • Human evolution

Background:

  • Monogamy is hypothesized to be crucial for human evolution and the development of cooperative societies.
  • The typical human mating system remains a subject of debate among researchers.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the prevalence of monogamy as a human mating system.
  • To provide comparative context for human mating behavior using sibling type data.

Main Methods:

  • Compared sibling type distributions (full vs. half-siblings) across over 100 human societies.
  • Utilized equivalent data from 34 non-human mammal species for comparison.

Main Results:

  • Human full sibling rates align closely with those of socially monogamous mammals.
Keywords:
extra-pair paternityhuman evolutionmammalsmarriagematingmonogamysiblings

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  • Human rates consistently exceed those observed in non-monogamous mammal species.
  • Significant cross-cultural diversity in human marriage and mating practices was noted.

    • Conclusions:

    • The high frequency of full siblings supports monogamy as the modal human mating system.
    • Findings suggest a link between monogamy and the evolution of human sociality.