Mate Poaching: How Rivals Intend to Steal Your Mate

Evolutionary psychology has paid a lot of attention to mating strategies. Recent research has paid specific attention to strategies that people use to attract mates who are already in a committed relationship. Psychologists refer to these tactics as “mate poaching.”

David Schmitt, an evolutionary psychologist from Bradley University, and David Buss (2001), an evolutionary psychologist from the University of Texas at Austin, have defined mate poaching as “behavior intended to attract someone who is already in a romantic relationship.”

Schmitt and Buss’s (2001) research indicates that mate poaching is relatively common. They found that 50% of the participants in their study have attempted mate poaching and 80% reported that that they were victims of mate poaching, either receiving attraction attempts directed at themselves or observing attraction attempts on their partners.

In their article, Nifty Ways to Leave Your Lover, Schmitt and Todd Shakelford (2003), an evolutionary psychologist from the Florida Atlantic University, identifies the strategies that people use to encourage and disguise mate poaching. Their results indicated that offering sexual access and demonstrating beauty were effective strategies for females to encourage mate poaching. For men, demonstrating resources and being generous encouraged mate poaching.

Keep your eyes open for mate poachers. If you are in a romantic relationship, you may be in danger of having your mate poached. Remember, mate poaching is common. Many of us know mate poachers or have been mate poachers ourselves.

Do you know any mate poachers?

Learn more about mate poaching.

Cross-Dressing Cuttlefish

"There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved."
-Charles Darwin

Darwin was absolutely correct when he pointed out that evolution is an extraordinarily unending source of fascinating biodiversity. A wonderful example of this evolutionary diversity is the cuttlefish, a squid-like marine animal that has evolved a complex mating strategy. In the world of cuttlefish, it is the responsibility of the males to compete over sexual access to the females. Sometimes when two males are engaged in a wrestling match over a female, a smaller male will disguise itself as a female in order to sneak past the other males for a chance to offer his sperm to the female. Interestingly, this mating strategy seems to be fairly successful. The female will take the packet of sperm donated by the cross-dresser and tuck it under one of her arms for future use.

Check out this link to learn more.