Anniversaries remind me of the roots of monogamy.
I was struck by this grey wolf pair in West Yellowstone, and took many pictures while I could. Wolves and voles on the prairie. The voles are a bumper crop of adorable mammals, feeding many of the wild canines on the planet.
And prairie voles are rare among mice for their “faithful marriages” (pair bonding, mongamy, and joint rasing of the young). Mountain voles and mice exhibit none of those traits. Tom Insel has done some fascinating experiments to genetically regulate the number of oxytocin and vasopressin receptors in the vole brain (these link to the D2 dopamine receptors associated with drug addiction). Mating causes a release of both hormones, but the right receptors have to be in the brain for the pair-bonding to follow.
In short, Tom was able to switch monogamy on and off in voles. Monogamy may boil down to the length of a DNA sequence in a promoter switch at the front of a particular receptor gene.
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