Thursday, February 28, 2008

Flirting & Sequestering

I was looking for clues as to why humans became monogamous. But it seems I latched on to another seeming subtle subject. I guess this involves a lot to do with mating rituals, but have you ever wondered why people rather have sex in private where as other animals usually have it in public?

These days the entries are increasingly related to the three letter word that some might feel offended even just thinking about it. But it is better not to stop thinking about it however, because it tells a lot about us - our macro social self. The male species had to copulate with the females in order to survive. The more number of females it copulated with the more chances that his trait and characteristics prevailed in the group. But this was also a time when polygamy was the norm, and it must have also been a pre-hunter gatherer society. Usually one male would have 5 or 6 females under his control. This also meant that he had to defend other males from stealing his females.

Sometimes this meant that the only way that those other males had to become reproductively successful was to lure those fertile females away from that group and mate. This way they sequestered the females to a seemingly private location and mated. This probably explains the psychology behind having sex privately in most human beings. Flirting was one tactic most males resorted to in order to lure the females. However I do not know the psychological origins of this phenomenon at the moment.

But this analogy does not explain why most people feel disgusted when they happen to see a couple in the process of mating in first person? I guess this is probably due to another type of evolution called cultural evolution. The type of evolution that I am more interested in the moment is natural evolution.