What inspires monogamy and fatherly behavior in animals?
It can have something to do with how much care the offspring actually need. If you’re a male bird and all of your offspring are going to die if you don’t take care of them, then your genes will not pass on to the next generation. You will be a Darwinian failure. In that case, only males who stick around to help will manage to pass on their genes. In some cases, like in some fish, the females just abandon the eggs, and if the male doesn’t take care of them, they won’t survive. Sometimes the female turns the tables. And humans are somewhere in the middle when it comes to sex and commitment? Currently, yes. There’s a lot of monogamy and paternal care, but we’re not quite as monogamous as birds and some other animals. Women can have sex, have babies and get by without a man. Monogamy depends a lot on social groups and whether you have help in raising offspring. Humans are so flexible. There are ways women can work around the need for fatherly care. In a lot of groups, there is serial monog
