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The human along with the tordalino arabian -a bird species of the middle East- are the only animals that have sex in private. Why? This is the question that led to Yitzchak Ben Mocha , anthropologist of the University of Zürich, to conduct a study of the habits of human procreation. The findings have just been published in the journal “Proceedings of the Royal Society B”.
Turdoides squamiceps or tordalino arabian – Wikicommons
The evidence suggests that human beings generally prefer to mate in private, but why? And why is it so rare? Apart from humans, only other species has shown a preference for privacy during mating: the Turdoides squamiceps -or tordalino Arabic-. For more information, Ben-Mocha recovered data from 4.572 examples of cultural studies (ethnographies) and analyzed them in search of what he describes as ” sexual practices normal “.
And discovered that virtually all cultures known to practice the mating private, even in places where privacy is difficult to find. He also sought examples of other animals that perform in this way the sexual act and cannot find any , except to the tordalinos. Found no scientific explanations of the fact. It is more, very few people had wondered why humans have such a propensity. And, as expected, could not find any evolutionary theory on the subject.
For this reason, Ben-Mocha concludes his article by presenting a theory of self : you believe that the reason why humans (and the tordalinos) began to seek privacy during sex was because the man he wanted to prevent other males see their female partner in a state of excitement . Such a state, the research suggests, would probably have encouraged other males to try to mate with her.
therefore, the privacy, or perhaps more accurately, the seclusion, allowing the man to maintain control over your sexual partner, at the same time allowing the ongoing cooperation within a group. Furthermore it suggests that the study of the evolution of the mating-private could lead to a better understanding of how developed the thinking skills in humans as they learned to work in groups and the influence of this practice within the human society.
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