They love and kill: Sex, sympathy and aggression in courtship and mating

In this far-ranging exploration of mating and sexual relations in animals and humans, Vitus B. Droscher examines for the first time the relationships among three instincts more powerful than reason: sexuality, aggression and the sympathy bonding drive. Recent discovery of the sympathy drive has brought a reexamination of previous beliefs concerning the courtship and mating habits of animals, as well as of human love and marriage. Experiments by zoologists and psychologists have revealed that two profoundly different forces can bind two animals together: the sexual instinct and the social bonding instinct, based on a feeling of sympathy or of mutual affinity and liking. Sexuality unites male and female for only as long as it take to mate, or at most, for a single mating season. The social bond may endure for years or even a lifetime. This book explores the social instinct as it functions in sexual relations. Describing the mating habits and methods of reproduction of over 300 species of animals - ways of behivor that are sometimes bizarre, sometimes horrifying and always fascinating - Vitus B. Droscher shows the interplay of these powerful instincts. he traces the evolution and development of ways of mating and reproducing, from species consisting only of females to nature's "invention" of the male, and from rape as a normal way mating in primitive creatures to such institutions as the harem, trial marriage and lifelong monogamy. Filled with engrossing life histories, the book shows that animals display many of the behavior patterns that are generally regarded as being exclusively human. Among them, for example, are flirtation, gift-giving, betrothal, trial marriage, polygamy, polyandry, homosexuality, prostitution, emotionally conditioned impotence, unfaithfulness, divorce and reconciliation. Droscher often turns from the lives of animals, moreover, to write with no less wit and penetrating insight about the sex lives and mating customs of humans.