If there is a genetic basis to Monogamy^[1] (in humans), it makes you wonder… well, makes me wonder at least… if there’s the potential that Monogamy could be breed out of human populations. And if there’s a potential, are there any signs today which makes it seem like it could be happening.^[2]

From a genetics point-of-view, from what I’ve read, it is easier for loss of function or exaggeration and redirections of functions to occur than to develop wholly new complex adaptations. As an example of that — as an example of what loss of function looks like — when comparing wolves to dogs we see that [m]ale wolves help care for their offspring, but male dogs do not.^[3] Then if we believe that Monogamy is a complex adaptation, then it would lead us to believe that it is easier for Monogamy to be lost than for it to re-evolve from scratch.

[1] Because people can mean different things when they say “monogamy”, to be explicit, what I referring to when I say “monogamy” is, when a male and a female live together, have sex with one another, and cooperate in acquiring basic resources such as food, clothes, and money. Often they also care for and raise offspring to together.

[2] Just to be explicit, I’m a fan of Monogamy.

[3] Even though male dogs don’t care for their offspring, I wonder if the “wiring” for that behavior is still there. But if it’s just kind of muted. And thus, would you really have to re-evolve that behavior from scratch.

I was digging through Yann Klimentidis’ Weblog, when I came across this article (again) where he talks about a paper entitled “The evolution of the social brain: Anthropoid primates contrast with other vertebrates” (PDF) that came out in Proceedings of the Royal Society, B.  Here’s an excerpt from Yann’s post….

The interesting thing that they find in this paper is that, in non-primate taxa, pairbonded species have larger brain sizes than would be predicted for group size. So there’s something about monogamy or related to monogamy that requires more brain power. In primates this effect does not happen. For them, those species that live in the largest groups have the larger brains. The authors give a short explanation as to why the pattern does not hold in primates, namely because in primates “these bonded relationships have been generalized to all social partners”….

(Emphasis mine.)

Read the rest of Yann’s comments post here…

(In case you don’t know why people tend to care about big brains… it’s because bigger brains are positively correlated with increased intelligence.)