Polyandry implies that a woman has simultaneous marriages with several men.
Polyandry is a term whose etymology refers to “many males” . The concept, common in the field of anthropology , is used to name the condition of a woman who maintains simultaneous marriages with several men .
Polyandry, therefore, implies that a woman is married to two, three or more men at the same time. When it is the man who is married to two or more women, this situation is known as polygyny .
Although polyandry is not very common, anthropologists have recorded cases in various peoples throughout history . Some ethnicities in China and Tibet allow polyandry, which also appears among the Inuit.
Modalities of polyandry
Generally, polyandry is explained by the high number of men compared to the number of women. In certain societies, this particularity is linked to infanticide committed against newborn girls.
One of the most frequent forms of polyandry consists of the marriage of the same woman with several brothers . This allows a blood family to maintain ownership of large tracts of land , without divisions.
Another type of polyandry develops when two or more men agree to marry a certain woman so that she can be protected in case one of them is missing.
Polyandry occurs in Eskimo peoples.
The term in botany and zoology
Botany , on the other hand, uses the concept to name the particularity of the flower that has numerous stamens (male organs). In the case of animals , polyandry is the mating of a female with different males during the same reproductive cycle.
This phenomenon is seen very frequently in the animal kingdom, despite what was believed decades ago, and occurs in a large number of species, ranging from mammals to insects, according to a study carried out by the British universities of Liverpool and Exeter . The results seem to demonstrate that polyandry can benefit an animal population by reducing the chances of it becoming extinct due to the absolute predominance of females.
Scientific study on polyandry in animals
According to this study, which was published in the scientific interest journal " Current Biology ", the survival of certain species seems to depend on their females having relationships with multiple males, since this reduces the action of the SR chromosome. , present in the cell nucleus, which is responsible for eliminating the Y chromosome from the sperm, which is needed for the formation of male individuals.
It should be noted that if the SR chromosome (which could be considered "anti-male") proliferated in a species and was carried by the majority of females, generation after generation the probability of males being born would be reduced, until one day its population would consist exclusively of females and, consequently, would lose the possibility of reproducing and would become extinct .
The species observed in this research was the fruit fly Drosophila pseudoobscura and the scientists pointed out that to understand the benefits of polyandry in the fight against the phenomenon of female predominance, it is important to take into account that males carrying the SR chromosome produce around 50% sperm compared to a normal one .
When a female mates with several males, there is competition between the sperm to reach the eggs, and the effect of the SR chromosome is no longer a threat, since the males that do not carry it generate many more sperm. Despite the efforts of these and other researchers to study polyandry (which has been detected in bees, vultures, macaques and frogs, among other species) it continues to be an enigmatic phenomenon for science , although it arouses deep interest given that it could be the key to combating extinction.