My family and other animals….

Many people believe that moral laws are biological in nature, and were developed so the man will know for sure that the children he cares for are his own flash and blood, and he should not worry he is wasting his time caring for another man's children. Is this popular belief scientifically true?
For most monogamous animals, as for example most bird couples that grow nestlings together, there is a clear phenomenon of females' seasonal heat. This way the monogamous male knows with higher confidence relative to ours that he cares for his own offspring. Women on the other hand, have a process called "hidden ovulation" and man cannot know the exact date of their oestrum. Additionally, most other monogamous females demonstrate sexual availability only during their manifested season, and women are having intercourse all year round. What is the ancient survival advantage hidden behind the women's wild behavior?
The hidden ovulation is a known maternal strategy, making the identity of the father indistinct and preventing the killing of the young by violent males. The secrecy of ovulation has separated the original connection between the pleasure of sexual intercourse and joint parenting as a couple with the inseminating male. In fact, having occasional sexual relations, with all the males in the group, assures the females that everyone will treat their young ones good. The males believe they are the fathers, since they have has sex with the females, who manifest false-oestrum all year long. This is a sophisticated fraud, giving the females an important survival advantage. This biological attribute proves by its existence, that the human female has given up (in her pre-cultural life) the need to create monogamous relationship with the biological father.

In our world there is a human-like group, applying the hidden ovulation strategy. Its members are called "Bonobo". These are shy and delicate apes, living in the rainforests of Zair. The Bonobo and Chimpanzees departed from us about six million years ago and they are a bit more similar to us than to the rest of the apes. Bonobos were classified in the past as "Pigmy chimpanzees" due to their great similarity to chimpanzees, but the biological splitting between the two species took place three million years ago. The chimpanzee females have a manifested heat, expressed by the swelling of the lips of their sexual organ. In contrast with them, the ovulation process, occurring in the bodies of Bonobo females and human females is hidden, and they exhibit false and real heat all year round. The Bonobo females have sexual intercourse all the time, on a daily basis, but their insemination has become a secret event that takes place only once in five years. The Bonobos are famous for their community life that is rich in wild and diverse group-sexual-activity. For example, when they discover a fig tree, they enjoy themselves with wild sex first, and only after that they move on to eating the fruit. ¹

Frans de Waal is a professor of Ethology who has been studying the Bonobos for about thirty years. He says the Bonobos are very similar to us; just for the purpose of demonstration, similar as the fox is similar to the domestic dog. The high genetic similarity between is and the Bonobos, can indicate the role of sex in the pre cultural human society. De Waal notes that the sexual interaction is strong social glue for the Bonobo. Orgasm experienced by everyone enables a coalition of dominant females to control the group, and facilitates the integration of the young in the society. Apparently due to this social-sexual glue, conflicts leading to injury or death are very rare among the Bonobo. In contrast, violent conflicts are very common among humans and chimpanzees. One of the Ethologists suggested an explanation for this great difference between our violent behavior and the relative calmness of the Bonobo "Who has the energy to become angry after an orgasm?" ²

The hidden ovulation and high sexual availability of women suggest that human monogamy is a late cultural conditioning. That is, monogamy might be a new phenomenon that replaced a previous way of life. Is such a radical change of behavior possible?
In order to examine the idea, let us look at an experiment that was performed in the 1970s and dealt with the (hidden) paternal potential of male Rhesus monkeys. The experiment was performed by two famous psychologists, Harry and Margret Harlow, at the University of Wisconsin. The experiment was Margaret Harlow's idea, after she noticed that female Rhesus monkeys (and other monkeys) raise their babies alone, without the assistance of the males. Rhesus observations, that took place in the rainforests and in captivity, showed that males keep a distance from the babies, and often show hostility toward babies daring to bother them.
For this experiment the researchers have built cages, in which mixed couples of adult Rhesus monkeys were raised. The cages were connected together with a network of small openings that lead to a shared play yard. The openings of the cages were narrower than the bodies of the adult monkeys, and they had to stay caged against their will. On the other hand, the babies that were born in the cages actually had a good time. They had free access to the play yard and from there they went into the different cages of the monkey couples. "Surprisingly, the male Rhesus monkeys have become devoted human fathers, really perfect fathers." This was Margaret Harlow's conclusion of the experiment, and she adds: "The males took care of their babies with great devotion and constantly played with them. They also behaved very politely to the other babies who came for a visit in the cage, and some of the foreign babies took advantage of the hospitality and badly harassed the hosting males." ³

The "human" living conditions enforced in Margaret Harlow's experiment, evoked "human paternal" behavior in male Rhesus monkeys. The experiment supports a theory assuming that the monogenic duality, common today, is a late cultural conditioning.