At 8/8/15 12:58 AM, DJ-Ri wrote:
At 8/8/15 12:53 AM, NeonSpider wrote:
Really? What about bonobos, which are great apes. They aren't monogamous at all and are in fact quite promiscuous.
I acknowledged the fact that monogamy is rare in most of the animal kingdom in my second post in this thread. Bonobos are also not members of the genus Homo.
Just because some animals seem to have a monogamous nature doesn't mean all do, or even ones which would be more closer related to humans, such as bonobos.
I didn't say all do, and I don't see how the behavior of animals belonging to a separate genus from humans that share a distant ancestor with us invalidates the possibility that we are instinctively monogamous.
You were mentioning penguins in support of monogamous behavior. Bonobos are far closer related to humans than penguins are. In fact, of those animals which are still living, bonobos and chimpanzees are the closest related to humans of any animals on earth, other than humans themselves.
It's funny to use penguins in support of monogamy, make a claim that human's closest genetic ancestors were monogamous (which I don't know if this claim is true or not -- you made the claim, not I), but then once bonobos are shown to support non-monogamous behavior suddenly "Oh those don't count because they're not Homo". .. Then what are penguins?
As to any Homo other than humans, none of the others are known to still exist so at best their behavior is guesswork based on what can be discovered, but the behavior of our closest living animal kingdom relatives, bonobos and chimps, can be directly observed and what is observed is sexually promiscuous behavior in bonobos and violent behavior in chimps. And I don't know about what you think, but I think both describe what can be commonly observed in humans as well.
Though of the two, I'd rather we be more like bonobos than chimps, personally.