Hey, happy Valentine's Day. I'm Mackin, this is species, and today we are going to celebrate Valentine's Day by learning about the biological advantages of monogamy.

This episode is going to be all about mating strategies in animals, including humans.

So if you're listening

and there are kids around and they aren't ready for such scandalous conversation, just skip

this one. Basically everything I do here is family friendly, but I always give a heads up if it's

debatable. Today it's debatable. Thank you to the donors. They're the reason you guys get

three episodes this week. Thank you, Eric and the

animals, for being dedicated enough to show up and play, even on a holiday. And thank you

for listening. I hope you enjoy. Usually when people talk about the benefits of monogamy, they have some religious or cultural background that they're trying to press on you.

They believe that for humans, alternative mating strategies are sinful or unethical or otherwise problematic.

But we're not having an ethical conversation today.

We're having an evolutionary one.

And usually, people don't take an evolutionary angle on this topic.

And I think I know why.

I think it's because if you have an introductory level understanding of evolution, from a biological perspective, monogamy really does seem like a losing strategy.

And this is totally understandable. I mean, think about it. If the survival of the fittest game is won by passing your genes onto the next generation, it makes

intuitive sense for animals to evolve to pass on their genes as many times as possible with

as many partners as necessary to accomplish that. Self-imposing a limit on yourself to just one

partner seems highly counterproductive from an evolutionary perspective.

And, frankly, this is what we see. It's what we see confirmed with most animals. The vast

majority of creatures we talk about on this show are reproductive opportunists. Many of them

seemingly feel no instinct for loyalty or romantic jealousy,

...