Marriage is a “precious institution” that saves children from unemployment, poverty and prison, David Cameron has argued. Actually, it’s even more precious than that, scientists said yesterday, as it saves them not just from prison, but from infanticide.
Researchers from University College London have investigated the origins of monogamy, a behaviour generally rare in mammals but which appears in about a quarter of primates.
They concluded that it emerged as a protection against one of biology’s more questionable courtship gestures — killing off a mother’s children so that she will mate with you instead.
Christopher Opie, an anthropologist at UCL, said: “It’s not the most romantic thing to do but, while a female is nursing her young, that delays a return to ovulation. If a