Some fifteen to twenty years ago there was a piece of scientific research which attracted a fair amount of attention in the general news media. I believe it may have helped provide some of the ammunition for those who hold bizarre beliefs about the relationship between conception & rape. In particular the rather garbled attempt by Todd Akin to explain the mystical mechanism by which the body of a Good Woman can carry out its own homicidal revenge upon the seeds of the would-be progenitor.
Any scientific research which was casting doubt on the received wisdom that, in Nature, faithful, monogamous, heterosexual pairings were the norm, was proving ever more attractive to the media at that time. This particular research, as I remember it, looked at birds, specifically females who mated with two different males, with the time interval between the two events short enough to allow both sets of sperm to be, effectively, in a race for the prize of paternity.
The scientists reported that they had found a mechanism which allowed the female to privilege one set of sperm over another – in effect to choose the father, presumably the one who best met the criteria for genetic or evolutionary fitness. A kind of Athena’s gift of skill in the art of war. Not that she was actually in control of the process, you understand.
Naturally there was much popular speculation about whether the human female possessed a similar adaptation.
If the scientists found cases where the female rejected both candidates, then either this was not reported in the general press or my memory has faded.
But then the mind of a human has a capacious ability to hold & treasure bits of the results of all those studies or surveys or experiments which seem to offer support for their most cherished hypotheses or beliefs.
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