ARE WE FAITHFUL?

New Monogamy Ranking Shows How Humans Stack Up Against Other Species

The study compares humans’ faithfulness to that of the rest of the animal kingdom.

How monogamous are humans compared to the rest of the animal kingdom? Somewhere between the Eurasian beaver and a meerkat, according to a new study published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society: Biological Sciences, which ranks different species of animals in a “premier league of monogamy.” The research, led by University of Cambridge evolutionary anthropologist Mark Dyble, analyzed data from 103 human societies and 34 mammal species to create a “league table” of monogamy by comparing the number of sibling pairs born to the same parents. Humans ranked seventh among those analyzed, with 66 percent of siblings sharing both a mother and a father—making our species less monogamous than the Eurasian beaver but more than the Lar gibbon, meerkat, and gray wolf. Topping the list with 100 percent monogamy levels is the California deermouse, followed by the African wild dog and the Damaraland mole rat with 85 and 79.5 percent, respectively. Scotland’s Soay sheep ranked lowest at 0.6 percent, behind several different species of macaque. Dyble says the findings demonstrate that social monogamy—forming stable pair bonds to help raise children—is a core human characteristic crucial to our species’ success, although fellow academics have criticized the findings for oversimplifying human nature.