JBeukema
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And have you noticed that it's always the men wanting many wives to care for them, service them and have their offspring? Does anyone know of a case of the reverse? Where a woman wanted/had many husbands at the same time to care for her, service her and get her pregnant?
It's called polyandry
Polyandry in Tibet
I think most women are too smart for polyandry
(source)Too many males can cost, in biological terms, the female. Females 'going' from one male to another are more exposed to injury, sexually transmitted diseases and predators, not to mention the wasted energy. In the polyandrous species, the female mates with more males.
Polyandry is widespread in nature. In 1 % of the birds, polyandry is the rule: nandu, cassowaries, some shore birds (like phalaropes), lily-trotters or buttonquails. Many frogs and reptile females, too, are highly promiscuous, but so are social spiders and insects, like beetles attacking stored food.
The honey bee is the whore of the insect world, exhausting many drones....
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Various Himalayan nations practiced this: in Tibet, Kashmir, Nepal, Buthan, Ladakh, Arunachal Pradesh (northeastern India) and Mosuo people. The extinct culture of the Marquesan Islands (Pacific) practiced polyandry, but the phenomenon was also encountered amongst Amerindians (in the Canadian Arctic), Ceylon, Mongolia, South India (by Toda people) and some Sub-Saharan African tribes. Guanches, the original inhabitants of the Canary Islands, practiced polyandry as well.
There are tribal societies considering that a child could and should possess more than one father. In many cases (like that of Tibet), polyandry was caused by a need to retain aristocratic titles or lands within the family or due to frequent absence of the husband for long periods from the household (so that usually only one husband was present). Poor farmers, too, could not afford to divide their small agricultural lands.
Some anthropologists see in human polyandry a method of birth control, as the woman will have only one pregnancy, no matter the number of partners, while in polygyny, a man impregnates several women, resulting more children.