Genetic Switches Behind 'Love' Identified In Prairie Voles

ananyo writes "Researchers have shown for the first time that the act of mating induces permanent chemical modifications in the chromosomes (epigenetic changes), affecting the expression of genes that regulate sexual and monogamous behavior in prairie voles. Prairie voles have long been of interest to neuroscientists and endocrinologists who study the social behavior of animals, in part because this species forms monogamous pair bonds — essentially mating for life. The voles' pair bonding, sharing of parental roles and egalitarian nest building in couples makes them a good model for understanding the biology of monogamy and mating in humans (abstract)."

Comments

Re:Good model?!?

[Immerman]

Indeed. Primate monogmay correlates fairly well with proportional testical size - by which measure humans fall about midway between gorillas (where the females will reject advances by anyone but their troop leader) and chimpanzees (who use sex for a wide variety of social purposes and demonstrate almost no prolonged sexual pair-bonding).

I would be inclined to suggest that holding long-term monogamy as the "ideal" human behavior is itself the source of the vast majority of the problems our species encounters in that domain. There are (were?) considerably advantages to such an arrangement when trying to establish stable sociological institutions upon which empires can be built, but those advantages come at the expense of trying to distort our basic natures into something that they are, generally speaking, not inclined to be.