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One common explanation of social monogamy is that it's a result of females choosing mates based on the male's ability to provide for his off spring and protect them from being killed by hostile males or by predators.
雌性動物需要一個能養育后代的雄性，這個雄性動物還可以保護幼崽們免于被具有敵意的其他雄性和天敵殺害。人們通常這樣解釋一夫一妻制的由來。
As you can imagine, females who have help from males produce more litters, and have more offspring that survive to pass on that paternal behavior.
你可以想象，有了雄性動物的幫助，雌性可以生產出更多幼崽，這樣就有更多的后代存活，父系行為模式就可以世世代代傳播下去。
Actually, a study suggests that maybe things happened the other way around, that monogamy evolved first and that paternal instincts evolved later and helped stabilize monogamy.
事實上，一項研究表明，也許一夫一妻制形成的過程恰好相反，即，首先是一夫一妻制逐漸形成，之后才有了父性本能的介入，并最終鞏固了一夫一妻制的形成。
Researchers in the UK classified more than 2500 mammalian species as either solitary, socially monogamous, or as group living, which is when several breeding females live together.
英國的研究人員分類整理了在多個正處于孕期的雌性動物一起生活時，獨居動物，實行一夫一妻制的動物，和群居動物等2500多種哺乳類動物的行為。
Then, for the socially monogamous species, they analyzed data from closely related species and discovered that, in each case, the females used to be solitary and territorial, and that infanticide was rare and therefore couldn't have led to monogamy.
他們分析了實行一夫一妻制動物近親的數據，發現在各個案例中，雌性動物以前都是獨居，并且地盤意識非常強，殺死幼崽的現象也幾乎沒有，因此不可能促使一夫一妻制的形成。
Then why did monogamy evolve?
那么一夫一妻制是怎么形成的呢？
The current thinking is that monogamy evolved as a mateguarding strategy in species where females lived alone too far apart for a single male to monopoliz eaccess to more than one female at a time.
目前的想法是，當雌性動物離得太遠，雄性動物一次無法同時兩個及兩個以上的雌性動物時，出于雄性動物保衛自身繁衍的目的，出現了一夫一妻制。
So monogamy enabled males to pass on their genesmore reliably.
這種制度可以增大遺傳雄性基因的可能性，于是一夫一妻制就形成了。
