Mamma Mia - Who's Your Daddy?

As a general rule Birds mate for life, and it seems, like us, play 'Happy Families'. But all is not what it seems. While Hubby bird is away gathering twigs for the nest and playing provider, the Mrs is busy with 'Other Things'. Yep, Non-Paternity or misattributed paternity (as it is called where offspring are not related to the male in a pair bond) varies between 17 to 75% among the different species of birds. Not only are female birds promiscuous, they also give their illicit chicks preferential treatment with 75% offspring from the 'extra pair matings' being produced in the first half of the egg clutch.

Believe it or not 'Birds' of the human variety are not so different - raising the possible question "Who's your Daddy"?

Four decades ago British media reported that researchers claimed 1/3rd of children may not know their biological father. The 1972 study of blood groups in a town in SE England and another in Liverpool both gave a 30% non-paternity result. Fact or fiction it certainly raised considerable debate.

Non-Paternity can only happen when a woman chooses to have more than one partner in a single ovulatory cycle. Recent studies reveal that the typical number of young women who have consecutive partners in a month to be .... you guessed it ... about 30%. And of some 382,000 Americans & 15,000 Australians who sought genetic testing in 2010 the misattributed paternity discovered was about 25%. However, As there is doubt of paternity in the first place - prompting the test - this result cannot be considered representative overall.

In his ideas of Evolutionary Game Theory John Maynard Smith debunked the then accepted Darwinian theory about dominant alpha males having the right to mate with submissive females who seemingly have little choice. In fact, while the males are fighting over breeding rites, females are having sex with subordinates. It is known as the Sneaky F...er Strategy, is common among many animals and clearly shows female choice is as important as male competition in the natural world.

More recent studies have revealed that when women are most likely to conceive they notice 'other' men more and are more likely to engage in extra marital sex resulting in non-paternity. Furthermore they are not only more sexually motivated but also actually select different types of men at different times of the menstrual cycle. - Bad Boy traits & 'masculinity' on fertile days and outside of the fertile days their preference shifts for Daddy, nice guy traits, kindness & fidelity. Of course this is occurring outside of women's conscious awareness.

So is non-paternity possibly as high as claimed in the early 70's at around 30%? Highly unlikely despite the proclivity of the 'animal' within giving us such a tendency, as witnessed by the bed hopping antics of the aristocracy on weekend parties at the grand Estates in pre Victorian times and the gusto with which Tahitian women welcomed sailors visiting their shores to their beds in the 18th Century. Society's cultural brakes on all things sexual tends to inhibit the natural scheme of things and, together with modern birth control & contraceptive methods non-paternity is much reduced. An example of a natural representative sample is found with the Himba people of Namibia who are quite open about non-paternal children. They call them Omoka and form about 17% of offspring. Omoka children are generally fitter and having more leads to greater reproductive success, according to the documentary.

While surveys indicate 8 to 12% of women have sex outside marital relationships (which gives the upper limit of non-paternity in our current society) the only reliable means of getting a true figure is from global accidental discovery of non-paternity (for example DNA tests for medical or criminal reasons). Well, we know it is 17% for the Himbra but elsewhere in the western world it varies between countries and socio-economic groups and is between 1% and 3%. Not very high but in, say, America it still means over 4 million and in Australia over 100,000 children are being daddy'd by a non biological father (not counting same sex, divorced, etc, couples).

So, Who's your Daddy?

Hugs and kisses

dolltime

PS: Still very sore and sorry following my operation but getting better slowly.