If the man is shooting blanks, can the woman take on a concubine?

Not all animals eat their own poo, and some humans in fact do that. Some humans mate with multiple partners. Some animals don't eat their young.

You're lumping every type of animal in the kingdom as one, collectively taking bits and pieces of each collective negative behaviors, and describing it as one animal, and comparing it to one type of animal, human.

And if humans are able to do such things, and this collective pool of animals cannot, why do 75% of humans cheat?

The clues are clearer in biology than they are in behavior.

Look at the functions of sperm: the breakdown is something like: 80% 'blockers,' 10% 'soldiers' and 10% swimmers (targeting the egg).

IOW, human sperm is engineered to battle with sperm from other 'suitors.' That makes the issue crystal clear: human females are engineered to allow for multiple partners. (In the cave, you can picture the guy falling a sleep and the female wandering off, ready to 'talk.') :-)

There has been a lot of testing since the advent of DNA that has shown a surprising percentage of women are not pregnant by their husbands. I have heard there's a phenomenon of fertility-driven 'cheating' where an ovulating woman may respond to a 'better specimen' on a biological level to "upgrade" the characteristics of their offspring.

Re: are humans supposed to be monogamous.
 

Let me try answering the original questions in case I wasn't clear before.

In nature "monogamous" animals do have sexual partners besides their usual mate so the premise is incorrect right from the start.

Again, the premise is incorrect. "Cheating" on a mate is not a purely human trait. In the case of "monogomous" animals "cheating" is probably the norm. When it comes to animals, however, it isn't "cheating" because their are no social mores for this behavior to violate.

I think you are starting to with a couple of (incorrect) premises and then trying to infer something about human monogamy. Even if the premises were correct, you couldn't use them to infer much of anything about human behavior. I'm sure there are ducks someplace that cross the street in some fashion that would be legal for humans as well. However, one can't infer anything about "correct" street crossing behavior for humans by observing the behavior of non-jaywalking ducks.

Nature hedges it's bets by having different reproductive strategies for a single species. If normally monogamous animal "A" carries a gene that confers resistance to a disease, it's might be in nature's interest to spread that gene around a little in case animal "A"s "family" gets eaten or something.

Obviously, humans have natural urges when it comes to reproduction. Biologically humans are going to have animal urges to take on multiple sexual partners. But biology is not morality and you can't and shouldn't use animal (or human) nature as a guide to what is right or wrong for humans.

-Chris

CC you are correct that I took several behaviors from animals to prove a point. And the fact that some humans do those things also proves the point.

Human eating his own poo - against societal norms.
Human killing another human - against societal norms.
Human eating his/her young - way way against societal norms.

The point is that humans have laid down rules to make an orderly society and the tradition of marriage and monogamy is one of them. The point still stands that just because something happens in nature doesn't make it ok or right. Unless of course you want to live your life like an animal and just listen to your primal instincts. Then theft, murder, polygamy, beastiality, incest, cannibalism, etc. all become A-OK. You choose which world you want to live in.

We are getting dangerously close to the most compelling topic of all; what are the specific things about a man that elicit sexual behavior in a woman and vice versa.

Turns out we are all responding to some pretty primitive stimuli.

It's been proven that humans with symmetrical facial features have fewer DNA errors and are more likely to produce healthy children. Every known standard of "beauty" reflects fewer chromosomal aberrations. This is true for both sexes.

Why are women attracted to alpha males? They are better able to keep the wolves out of the cave, hunt successfully and sire healthy children. Why is the geeky but successful male able to pretty much choose from the top of the list of females? Because "dominance", whether physical or financial, represents the alpha trait...highly desirable.

Men are pretty simple; we are attracted to fertile females with good DNA. Yup, we are aroused by pretty much every young attractive woman.

Yet 75% of people cheat, yet people steal, murder, enjoy polygamy, beastiality, incest, cannabalism. Apparently human societal norms aren't all that effective.

But because animals don't speak the english language, we assume that they too don't lay down their own laws and are policed, etc. Just because we cannot communicate with them, we assume they are only driven by instinct. The truth of the matter is, we honestly don't know that different species don't police themselves, lay down societal standards, etc. We really don't know.

I was watching something on the Discovery Channel of these elephants would congregate in this area, they couldn't figure out how they knew when and where to meet (may have been for mating purposes or for some other purposes, I can't remember now...). They discovered that they communicate at a pitch that is inaudible to the human ear. We can't even hear them communicating...

Dolphins, look how smart those animals are. Unless we learn to live among them (we probably can't survive weeks on end in the water, they cannot survive weeks on end on land), and learn their language, or they learn ours (or perhaps it too is at a pitch we cannot hear) we really don't know what sort of societal standards they adhere to, what depth of reasoning they do, etc.

The truth of the matter is, unless we become smart enough to learn their language, we cannot definitively determine that they are NOT guided by a societal standard like we are.....

Re: Re: are humans supposed to be monogamous.
 

If they do, they're not monogamous. There are species that do NOT have sexual partners other than their usual mate, and if that mate dies, they never mate again (think birds).

http://www.dlynnwaldron.com/Missionarycrop.jpg


monkey see , monkey do

I'm a bit confused as to your point. Are you saying that just because one person does something then it is ok and should not be considered amoral? If that's the case then it is a free for all because surely someone somewhere has done anything imaginable.

Or are you just saying you want to learn to talk to dolphins?

The Selfish Gene is great read.

Anthroplogically, men are hard wired to spread seed.

Females are hard wired to select the best mate. The female controls mating and reproduction.

Now that DNA testing is widely available and popularly used in matters of parentage, its showing some startling results and having real social and leagl impacts. I heard one expert (what ever that is) estimate that 30%of children -broadly, across western society) may not have been fathered by the person who believes himself the father. Hmmm.

Re: Re: Re: are humans supposed to be monogamous.
 

Mrs. Raccoon thinks he's out bowling with the guys.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1148259282.jpg

Moral and amoral are just made up human words assigned to a made up human idea, or perhaps theory is a better word. I don't believe animals and humans (another animal) are so different.....

And yes, I would love to learn to talk to dolphins. That would be awesome.

BTW, do you know how intelligent the African Grey is?

Look at that big ol smile......

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1148260106.gif

Two guys, one old and one young, are pushing their carts around Home Depot when they collide.


The old guy says to the young guy, "Sorry about that. I'm looking for my wife, and I guess I wasn't paying attention to where I was going." The young guy says, "That's OK. It's a coincidence. I'm looking for my wife, too. I can't find her and I'm getting a little desperate."

The old guy says, "Well, maybe we can help each other. What does your wife look like?

The young guy says, "Well, she is 27 yrs old, tall, with red hair, blue eyes, long legs, big boobs, and she's wearing tight white shorts. What does your wife look like?"

The old guy says, "Doesn't matter --- let's look for yours.

Cool,
One of my housemates when I lived in Boston was Melinie Perkins, she was a little hottie that was also an assistant producer for several documentrys, one was "The Secret Lives of Dolphins". She spent several months filming them in Fla and thoughout the Caribe. I remeber a few things she told me when she got back was:
1) They are incredably smart - almost scary.
2) The males travel in pods - threes mostly and will engage in battle with other pods for water rites (normally for better fish areas) but will also help each other rape female dolphins! Seriously. Two will pretty much keep her positioned while the third does its thing. This is not the normal way in which they mate but young ones will. It is against the will of the female so therefor it is considered rape.
3) Although they look friendly with that pertetual smile, they have been known to attack people and put a hurt on them.
4) They do engage in play and often exhibit a sense of humor.

She told me that some of the stuff they found out didn;t make it to the reel - it was decided that the overal flavor was to reamin positive and that to stress the rape and gangland actvity of these critters wasn't the message they were trying to convey - they did mention it but without the detail.

The same sort of thing is seen in all sorts of primates.

They also kill kids to bring the female back into heat.

"To Touch A Wild Dolphin" by Rachel Smolker is currently the best and latest info available afaik.

Yea whatever, I saw how she was dressed and she was givin' all three of em the f' me eyes.

They also rape homosexually, often times, interspecies.

There no place for dolphins in heaven.

dems planty good eat'n doh!