To proceed further with our theoretical exploration of Game Plan 3, we need rigorous empirical data on EMS. As surveys of people's sexual habits are notoriously unreliable, let's first turn to some recently published studies of birds that nest as mated pairs in large colonies. These, rather than our closest relatives the apes, are the animals whose mating system most closely resembles our own. Compared to us, birds have the disadvantage that one cannot ask them about their motives for EMS, but this is no great loss, as our answers are often lies anyway. The great virtue of colonial birds for EMS research is that one can band the birds in a colony, then sit nearby for hundreds of hours and determine exactly who does what with whom. I am unaware of equivalent information for a large human population. Important recent observations of adultery among birds were made on five species of herons, gulls, and geese. All five nest in dense colonies composed of nominally monogamous male/female pairs. One parent alone is incapable of rearing a chick, as an unguarded nest is likely to be destroyed while the parent is off gathering food, nor is a male capable of feeding or guarding two families simultaneously. Consequently, among the ground rules of sexual strategy for these colonial birds are the following: polygamy is forbidden; copulation with or by an unmated female is pointless, unless she soon acquires a mate to care for the resulting offspring; but surreptitious fertilization by one male of another male's mate is a viable strategy.
The first study involved great blue herons and great egrets at Hog Island, Texas. In these species the male builds a nest and stays there to court visiting females. Eventually a male and female accept each other and copulate about twenty times. The female then lays eggs and goes off to spend most of the daylight hours feeding, while the male remains to guard the nest and eggs. During the first day or two after pairing, the male often resumes courting any passing female as soon as his mate leaves to feed, but EMS does not result. Instead, the male's halfway-unfaithful behaviour seems to constitute 'divorce insurance' that reserves a back-up mate for him in case his own mate deserts (she does desert him in up to twenty per cent of the pairings reported). The passing 'back-up' females pursue the courtship out of ignorance. They are seeking a mate and have no way of knowing that the male is already mated, until his spouse returns (which she does at frequent intervals) and drives them off. Eventually, the male gains complete confidence that he will not be deserted, and he ceases to court any passing females.
In the second study, of little blue herons in Mississippi, behaviour that might have originated as divorce insurance took a more serious turn. Sixty-two cases of EMS were documented, mostly between a female on her nest and a male from the neighbouring nest while the female's mate was busy finding food. Most females initially resisted but then ceased resisting, and some females engaged in more EMS than marital sex. To reduce his own risk of being cuckolded, the adulterous male did his feeding as quickly as possible, returned often to his own nest to guard his mate, and travelled no further than neighbouring nests to seek EMS. EMS was usually timed to occur when the chosen female had not yet completed egg-laying and could still be fertilized. However, adulterous copulations were quicker than marital copulations (eight versus twelve seconds), hence possibly less effective at fertilizing, and nearly half of all nests involved in EMS were subsequently abandoned.
Among herring gulls in Lake Michigan, thirty-five per cent of mated males were observed to engage in EMS. This percentage is nearly the same as the value of thirty-two per cent reported for young American husbands in a study published by Playboy Press in 1974, but there is a big difference between gulls and humans in female behaviour. Whereas Playboy Press reported EMS for twenty-four per cent of young American wives, every mated female gull virtuously rejected adulterous male advances and never solicited the neighbouring male in her own mate's absence. Instead, all cases of male EMS involved unmated female gulls practising PMS. To decrease his own risk of being cuckolded, the male spent more time chasing intruders away from his nest when his mate was fertile than when she was not fertile. As for how the male induced his mate to remain faithful during the time that he was off seeking EMS, his secret—like that of some married men similarly pursuing a mixed reproductive strategy—consisted of feeding her diligently and copulating often whenever she was receptive.
Our final set of rigorous data involves snow geese breeding in Manitoba. Just as I explained in the case of little blue herons, EMS in snow geese mainly involves a male approaching an initially resisting female on a neighbouring nest in the absence of her mate. The mate's absence is usually due to the fact that he himself is off seeking EMS. It may seem as if the male thereby loses as much as he gains, but a male goose is not so dumb. As long as the female is still laying eggs, her mate remains to guard her. (A nesting female is propositioned fifty times less often in her mate's presence than in his absence.) Only after the female has finished laying does her mate go off on EMS quests, with his paternity assured at home. Such bird studies illustrate the value of a scientific approach to adultery. They have revealed a series of sophisticated strategies by which adulterous male birds try to have it both ways, so as to obtain confidence of paternity at home while sowing their seed abroad. The strategies include wooing unmated females for 'divorce insurance', as long as one feels unsure of one's wife's fidelity; guarding one's fertile spouse; feeding her copiously and copulating with her often, to induce her to remain faithful in one's absence; and coveting one's neighbour's spouse at a time when she is fertile and one's own spouse is no longer fertile. However, not even these applications of the scientific method in all its power sufficed to clarify what, if anything, female birds gain from EMS. One possible answer is that female herons weighing desertion of their mates may use EMS to shop around for a new mate. Another is that some unmated female gulls in colonies with a deficit of males may get fertilized by PMS, and then try to rear the chicks with the help of another, similar female.
The chief limitation of these colonial bird studies is that the females often seem to be unwilling participants in EMS. For further understanding of a more active female role, we have no choice but to turn to human studies, riddled as they are with problems of cultural variation, observer bias, and dubiously reliable survey responses.
Surveys comparing men with women in various cultures scattered around the world typically purport to find the following differences: men are more interested in EMS than are women; men are more interested than women in seeking a variety of sexual partners for the sake of variety 'itself; women's motives for EMS are more likely to be marital dissatisfaction and/or a desire for a lasting new relationship; and men are less selective in taking on a casual female sexual partner than vice versa. For example, among the New Guinea highlanders with whom I work, the Men say they seek EMS because sex with their own wife (or even wives, m the case of polygynous men) inevitably becomes boring, while the women who seek EMS do so mainly because their husband cannot satisfy them sexually (for example, because of old age). In the questionnaires that several hundred young Americans filled out for a computer dating service, women expressed stronger partner preferences than men did in almost every respect: intelligence, status, dancing ability, religion, race, etc. The only category in which men were more selective than women was physical attractiveness. After a date the men and women then filled out 'debriefing' questionnaires, with the result that two-and-a-half times as many men as women expressed a strong romantic attraction to their computer-selected partner. Thus, the women were choosier, the men more undiscriminating, in their reactions to partners.