Late Spring Musings

 Written quite a while ago.

 

Cat contemplating deer. 

I'm back at the ranch and very happy to be so.  I hadn't realized how much I loved this natural world free from the isolated self-importance of mankind.  The birds sing, the cattle low and the wind roars in a steady drone.  Once in a while a dog barks. Otherwise there is silence.  No sounds of passing cars, distant sirens, somebody else's television....  Nothing. Utter silence.  It's wonderful.
I try to walk every morning before the wind picks up but sometimes I can't get free until afternoon when the wind is blustering boldly, fully in charge of the world. At first I avoid the wind, seeking shelter behind buildings and fences, groves and glades, but then as I warm up from walking I welcome it, striding out into fields and facing it, spreading my arms to embrace it.  It feels delightful on my face, fluttering my clothes and making me feel almost as if I could soar up into the sky like a kite.
The trees must love the wind, for they dance to its tune.  But in their shelter all is still.  The deer browse, the cats hunt.  In the sky, the vultures dip and soar, the hawks circle and circle.  Did you know hawks mate in the air?  I've watched them come together, screeing loudly, tumble and fall, break apart and soar back up into the sky only to do it again.  It must be wildly exhilarating. 

What a contrast with the house sparrows.  I watched an excited boy sparrow mate with a girl sparrow perched on a fence post.  She scarcely reacted as he, thrashing his wings, pounced on her, copulated with vigorous enthusiasm, flew around her in a circle, rested on a branch, flew back to her and did it again, and again, till finally exhausted, he flew off to get a drink of water from the bucket I'd been watering roses from.  She, through all of this, remained unruffled. When she ascertained he was done, she preened her hindquarters and flew off.
Lambing season is long over and all the little ones are growing fast.  Sheep, like many mammals, breed in the late summer or fall and give birth in late winter to early spring.  Short-day breeders, they are called, becoming amorous when the nights begin to grow long.  A ram will mate with half-a-dozen ewes a day, day after day, mounting even his mother and his daughters.  We only need one ram to impregnate dozens of ewes. You don't want to bend over in a sheep fold during estrus season.  Trust me.
Deer also breed in the fall and give birth in the spring.  Stags clashing antlers with loud clacks as they vie for breeding rights is one of the sure signs that autumn has arrived.  The does seem coy, walking, sometimes running, away from the attention of their suitors until finally they relent and stand while the stag mounts them.

Cattle, on the other hand, breed in late spring and calve in winter.  I've never understood that, but it must make sense, maybe because predators such as bears are hibernating and wolves and lions can't as easily attack.  I  don't know.  But I do know you'd best stay out of the pasture and away from the breed bull at this time of year, not because he's amorous but because he's aggressive.  No picnics under the old oak tree.
Horses also breed at this time of year.  The mare raises her tail and pees to attract the stallion. He mounts her and sometimes ejaculates so intensely he faints.  Other times, he does one mare and immediately mounts another.  I've wondered if the fainting is because the stallion has a powerful desire for a special mare and when he climaxes he does so passionately, while other times he is just getting off on a casual hook up. 

A couple fond of each other out of mating season.

I do think animal sex is very much like human sex (we are animals, too, after all), the major difference being that the females of other animals are only receptive to sex at certain times while human females are always receptive -- theoretically, at least. But male non-human animals seem always ready for sex, as evidenced by their sometimes attempts to mount human females or even inanimate objects, as well as masturbating. What can be the purpose of that? I mean their readiness for sex when the female is not. I suppose it just doesn't matter what males do, while the timing of female receptiveness is important to ensure her babies are born at the best time of year for their survival.
I recall reading some pop science author speculating that the reason human females remain in estrus year round is to strengthen pair bonds: a couple can enjoy themselves with sex any time they want so there is incentive to stay together and maintain affectionate good relations with each other for years, years when their care-needing babies grow into self-sufficiency.
But I've thought while watching animals during the non-estrus months that they, too, develop special relationships with specific members of the opposite sex that they maintain through the off months, so to speak, then extend that relationship into sex during the time of heat. Many species of bird are famous for mating for life even though the hen is not sexually available most of the year.  And I have noticed does refusing to mate with a dominate stag who has defeated his rivals in battle, instead sneaking off to copulate with a special male friend, and also sometimes allowing the big cahoona to mount her, then when he's done -- he squeals when he ejaculates -- going off to mate with her shy boyfriend waiting in the woods.
Is that a type of cuckoldry?  If so, which is the cuckold?  I suppose it's the one whose sperm does not fertilize her eggs.  And which one would that be?  Could it be the one whose offspring she wishes to bear?
If you think that couldn't be possible, what about studies that have shown that a male whose sperm are more capable of fertilizing the female's egg does not mate guard and doesn't care if other males mount "his" female, while males with weaker sperm are zealous mate guarders and fight off -- or try to -- other males interested in "their" female.  How does the male with strong sperm know he needn't mate guard?  How does the male with poor quality sperm know he must mate guard?
It occurs to me that the male armed with "fire-and-forget" sperm would be the Lothario, Don Juan, Casanova type, the player.  His way of reproducing seems like it would be advantageous in a species with quick maturing offspring, but in a species like humans where offspring need years of parental care, that way would not be good.  The male with weak sperm that force him to mate guard vigorously seems like the type most favorable for offspring survival.  That's assuming, of course, that once the baby is born, he sticks around.  Maybe he does because he has so much invested in the particular female and if a bond of affection develops between them, he might not have to expend so much energy mate guarding in the future.
But when I plow through the literature, I find statements like this: "High quality men (with better quality ejaculates) may invest less in mate guarding because their partners are less likely to seek extra-pair copulations. Conversely, men of low mate value (with poorer quality ejaculates) may invest more in mate guarding because they are at a greater risk of having their mate defect from the relationship." 

Does this mean that jealous men, always suspicious that their wives are getting it on with the UPS guy or a co-worker, have poor sperm and that somehow the wife knows it and so seeks out a male with stronger sperm?  Or is it that his jealousy alienates her, that his constant accusations that she is having an affair with the mailman or the neighbor across the street ruin the relationship and she ends up actually doing what he accuses her of doing?  Even if she never does that, such weak-sperm men are most commonly abusers and the most likely to engage in spousal rape.*
Conversely, does the male with strong sperm that he knows somehow can out compete other males' sperm attract females who stick to him because mating with him guarantees offspring even though he may have wandering eye and an easy time seducing other women and giving them children, too? 
He doesn't mate guard because he doesn't have to, not only because his sperm are strong but because she has no incentive to mate with other males and will not mind if he mates with other women as long as he doesn't desert her. And if she does mate with other men, he does not mind because he knows his sperm will out-compete theirs. 
There are studies that show that male sexual behavior varies depending on how long a couple has been apart or whether other men have shown interest in the female.  If a man has been away from "his" woman for some time, when he returns he copulates with her more vigorously, thrusting deeper and prolonging coitus, as well as copulating more frequently, actions that will more likely result in pregnancy. Other studies have determined that if other men show interest in "his" woman, a man will find her more sexually attractive and copulate with her more vigorously than he otherwise would.
If all this is more or less true, it seems to explain a lot about human male-female relationships.
Now where do women with poor quality eggs fit into this scenario? Do they seek out multiple sex partners in the hope of finding one with strong enough sperm to fertilize them and produce viable offspring?  Then do they find a male with weak sperm who will mate-guard while being an unknowing cuckold?  That seems unlikely as studies have shown that such actual cuckoldry is very rare, at least among Europeans and the European diaspora.

But I ran across a study done by a researcher who wondered if the seven-year itch trope was a real thing and examined the reproductive practices of the Kalahari Bushmen to find out, I suppose because there is a lot of literature about their life ways. Anyway, he found out that a Bushwoman switched husbands every four years.  She would nurse her child for four years, with the sperm donor, I guess we could call him rather than husband, helping raise the child.  Then she would boot him out and mate with a different man, birthing his child, repeating the cycle throughout her reproductive life, having a kid every five years or so, each one with a different father.  So her offspring had a lot of genetic diversity.
The researcher wondered if this pattern also occurred among other groups, especially Westerners, thinking maybe that among Whites, the slower maturing child needed a few more years to attain self-sufficiency, thus seven years instead of four.  Cuckoldry didn't seem to play any role, being documented to be only in the 1 to 2 percent range historically. But he thought divorce might, the biological reason for divorce being to allow the woman to birth genetically variable children.  However, he couldn't find any clear pattern, especially since divorce has only been socially acceptable in the past few generations in the West.

Anyway, bottom line, is it that men with strong sperm are promiscuous and women with weak eggs also are promiscuous, and men with weak sperm aren't promiscuous and neither are women with strong eggs?  And is the expected life-pairing of men and women an aspect of agricultural/urban societies but not of hunter-gatherer societies -- the type of society humans evolved in? 
The large penis of humans compared to that of other primates does suggest that we evolved in an environment with strong male competition to impregnate women who routinely had sex with multiple men; the larger size enabling ejaculation closer to the cervix.  Supporting this may be a study that found that pornography depicting a woman having sex with multiple men was more arousing for male viewers than that of men having sex with multiple women.
 So is the war between the sexes, however defined, a result of the fact that we evolved over hundreds of thousands of years to have multiple sex partners to maximize genetic opportunism, if that is the right term, with children expected to be self-sufficient at an early age? But the world we have lived in for the past some thousands of years requires raising and training children to and through puberty, while also encouraging conservation of favorable genetic lines?  Does this new world favor less fertile males and more fertile women?  If so, how does this relate to world-wide falling birth rates? Is it that modern urban women, delaying attempts at child-bearing until past their prime fertile years, cannot get pregnant with the weak sperm of civilized man?

All I know personally is that if I suggest to el jefe that he has weak sperm and a small penis then skip away, he will chase me down and make highly convincing efforts to disprove my assertion. So I suggest it to him often.  But I have learned to avoid suggesting it in Costco.

 

 *Studies have shown that women are more likely to become pregnant from rape than from normal intercourse, so a male with weak sperm has an incentive to rape his spouse, especially if he suspects infidelity.  Other studies have shown that a woman's orgasm aids sperm in reaching the egg, increasing the likelihood of pregnancy, and yet other studies have shown that women are more likely to orgasm during rape than in normal intercourse.  Why this should be so is not clear.  You can imagine the fury these findings have engendered. But it is well known that rape fantasies are very common among women.  Yet women are also afraid of being raped in real life and are often severely traumatized should they actually be raped.  So what does all this mean?  I don't know. Maybe a study of Kalahari Bushwomen will reveal the answer.