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Sexual exclusivity just isn't nature's way. So conclude some recent studies that show that the creatures moralists have long held up as exemplars of monogamaical devotion in reality like to sleep around.

Take bluebirds, hailed as lovebirds for the life-long loyalty that couples show for each other. As if they were a progressive 90s couple, bluebird pairs cooperatively build nests, incubate eggs, feed their chicks, and stick together for life.

But it's not all prudishness and white picket fences in Bluebirdville. Using the same genetic tests that recently outed Thomas Jefferson as an interracial girl-lover, University of Georgia ecologist Patricia Gowarty has found that around 15 and 20 percent of bluebird chicks raised by a bonded bluebird couple are not actually sired by the male of the next.

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The sexual variety that bluebirds enjoy doesn't change the fact that bluebird couples are devoted-- they are, in the lingo, socially monogamous, mating for life. But life-long pairbonding does not get in the way of their sexual variety-- kind of like with humans.

Many species make no pretense to sexual monogamy-- they screw as they see fit. But dogs, rabbits, and horses have never been held up as models of sexual rectitude (perhaps they ought to be). Even among the creatures most akin to humans, rampant fucking-around is the dominant pattern. This hold true even for most primates-- most of whom are quite sexually open. But even among those who mate for life-- whom biologists, doubtless projecting contemporary Western mores onto the subjects of their inquiry-- sleep around. Sexual openness together with social monogamy seems to be the by far the dominant pattern among species whose reproductive pairs mate for a long time, researchers are discovering.

Males are usually the ones regarded as getting a better deal from sleeping around, with women seen as favoring long-term sexual loyalty. Men of most species (humans among them) don't pull their weight in raising the young, and so get a shot at reproducing their genes without having a lot of "commitment." But given its frequency, sexual nonexclusivity must also have something in it for females-- they get to mate with males with better genes than the one they're primarily stuck with. That theory is bolstered by the observation that females who catch a really genetically well-endowed male as their mate tend to be more sexually loyal. When the greenest grass grows inside your own picket fence, there's no need check out other yards.

It's clear that sexual nonmonogamy can also strengthen social monogamy, by providing outlets for sexual needs and satisfying a yen for variety that a single relationship can't provide. Does biology's recasting of animal behavior offer humans a moral?