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On the radio a nature program had started and an enthusiastic voice was waxing lyrical about seals. "Every Summer Berhaus seals collect in the Bering Strait to mate. Since the males are in the majority, the competition for females is so fierce that those males who have managed to procure themselves a female will stick with her during the whole of the breeding period. The male will take care of his partner until the young have been born and can cope by themselves. Not out of love for the female, but out of love for his own genes and hereditary material. Darwinist theory would say that it is natural selection which makes the Berhaus seal monogamous, not morality."

I wonder, thought Harry.

The voice on the radio was almost turning falsetto with excitement. "But before the seals leave the Bering Strait to search for food in the open sea, the male will try to kill the female. Why? Because a female Berhaus seal will never mate twice with the same male! For her this is about spreading the biological risk of hereditary material, just like on the stock market. For her it makes biological sense to be promiscuous, and the male knows this. By taking her life he wants to stop the young of other seals competing with his own progeny for the same food."

"We're entering Darwinian waters here, so why don't humans think like the seal?" Another voice said.

"But we do, don't we! Our society is not as monogamous as it appears, and has never been. A Swedish study showed recently that between fifteen and twenty percent of all children born have a different father from the one they--and for that matter the postulated fathers--think. Twenty percent! That's every fifth child! Living a lie. And ensuring biological diversity."

Harry fiddled with the radio dial to find so e tolerable music. He stopped at an aging Johnny Cash's version of "Desperado."

OG Necromancer posted: