The scientific argument for monogamy

I've heard this one before. Have you? "Humans might be naturally promiscuous," they say. Then they bolster their opinion with, "After all, our closest ancestors are apes and monkeys, and they're promiscuous." Now what do you say in response to that? You know that men are not apes, and that we aren't supposed to act just like them. The argument against their talking point has generally taken that tack (apes also engage in rape and infanticide, and we wouldn't want to make that part of society, would we?) or simply the emotional/spiritual form (we have the ability to act beyond our instincts, it separates us from the animals, etc.), which is hard to explain to someone who doesn't think we're anything special.

So in interests of advancing a new argument to bring into the mainstream, I would like to introduce you to the Prairie Vole.

The prairie vole is a curiosity among voles because of it's monogamous behavior. It has, in fact, *very* monogamous behavior. It forms a life-long mating bond. The mated couple live together, groom each other, engage in various animal forms of affection (rather than only showing interest during mating time), and the male even helps the female nurture and raise the children. Promiscuity is very rare, mostly because the mated vole comes to dislike the very scent of other voles of the opposite sex.

Why should we care about the prairie vole? After all, doesn't the whole "we are promiscuous because apes are promiscuous" argument hedge on our similarity to apes? Well, that's the interesting thing. We share DNA with the prairie vole. Specifically, our sexual-behavior DNA is an identical strand. It has the same information, and it repeats the same number of times. Does it make a difference? Yes. When that DNA strand was fitted into a sample group of the ardently promiscuous meadow vole, they turned just as monogamous as the prairie vole.

Curious, I did a search on "prairie vole" and "homosexual". The best I could come up with was a study that showed that prairie voles formed temporary same-sex relationships under certain conditions. However, though the relationships involved shared sleeping space and some grooming, they did not mention anything about actual *sexual* behavior.