Humans are playing in the premier league of monogamous mammals, according to a new ranking of animals by their reproductive habits, but we may need a new manager to beat the beavers.
In the study from University of Cambridge, humans ranked 7th out of 35 species on the monogamy scale, pipping white-handed gibbons and meerkats, but lagging behind moustached tamarins and Eurasian beavers.
Dr Mark Dyble, an evolutionary anthropologist at Cambridge, said humans sit comfortably in the top flight for monogamous species, but the vast majority of mammals take “a far more promiscuous approach to mating”.
Animals in the lower ranks include feral cats, bottlenose dolphins and our close genetic relatives, chimpanzees
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