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@lienrag @davoloid

Come and hear tonight's brilliant talk by Kit Opie. He will be using a comparative evolutionary framework to work out how so-called 'monogamy' might arise from a highly promiscuous chimp/bonobo background. He'd focus on the issue of infanticide by males, one of the major aspects of primate sexual conflict.

Mating systems are very much affected by female strategies to avoid infanticide. Almost half of 200+ primate species have documented observation of infanticide. Males who are certain they have NOT had sex with a mother are a risk. Hence female strategies for promiscuity to confuse males about 'who's the daddy?' If a male has even a squeak of a chance of being the dad, he won't kill an infant. So females lead them to believe it. This is built on work by the major Darwinian theorist of human evolution, Sarah Hrdy. If you never heard of her, 'Mothers and others' is the best book on human evolution this century

https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674060326