When you compare us to other mammals, humans are mostly monogamous

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2025-12-10 11:01

International

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You and me baby, ain’t nothin but mammals, so let’s… love each other forever, according to international research. The author set out to understand how monogamous humans are by comparing full and half siblings seen across 34 mammal species, as well as across over 100 human societies. The author says that despite the cultural differences we see in humans, the proportion of full (rather than half) siblings is similar to that seen in other monogamous mammalian species (about 65% on average). It’s also consistently higher than what you’d see in non-monogamous mammal species, such as chimpanzees (around 9% on average). The researcher says his findings reinforce the argument that humans are indeed predominantly a monogamous species, and the idea that monogamy has played an important role in human evolution.

Media release

From: The Royal Society

Human monogamy in mammalian context

Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences

How monogamous are humans? This study considers this question by comparing the number of full and half siblings seen across >100 human societies with data from 34 mammal species. Despite considerable cross-cultural variation, the proportion of full (rather than half) siblings seen in humans (~65% on average) is similar to that seen in monogamous mammal species, and is consistently higher seen in non-monogamous mammal species (~9% on average), including chimpanzees. These results are consistent with the characterisation of monogamy as the being the predominant human mating system.

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Journal/
conference: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences

Research:Paper

Organisation/s: University of Cambridge, UK

Funder: No funding has been received for this article.

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