As you can see from the creatures you share your home with, animals enter the mating period and experience an intense desire to reproduce during these periods.
So why don’t we humans, who are basically animals, enter such a period? Or do we enter but we are not aware of it?
Animals give birth to their young in more favorable periods.
Most animals have a breeding season. Thus, offspring; spawns or hatches during periods when there is more food, good sunlight, and the weather is not too harsh. Of course, there are exceptions, such as dog breeds that go into heat twice a year or rodents that breed year-round.
In the living world, we are divided into “seasonal breeders” and “perpetual breeders”.
“Seasonal breeders” such as bears or squirrels show sexual activity at certain times of the year. Moreover, females of these species only experience a cycle that brings about physiological and behavioral changes that lead to increased sexual activity at certain times. If pregnancy does not occur, the endometrial lining in the uterus is reabsorbed.
We humans in the “continuous breeders” group, on the other hand, ovulate regularly and get periods if the egg is not fertilized. That is, physiological processes are not required to induce sexual activity.
There are different opinions about the mating period in humans.
According to some scientists; seasonal mating is still going on for humans. In nomadic Turkana in northwestern Kenya, more than half of all births occur during the spring season, when food is plentiful.
In addition to food abundance, environmental and social factors can also have an impact on humans. According to a study published in the Journal of Reproductive Rhythms, when the sun shines for about 12 hours a day, women are more likely to ovulate and men produce more sperm when the temperature is between 10 and 21 degrees Celsius.
Studies have proven that people reproduce more during certain periods.
The findings, published in the Journal of Human Reproduction, showed that in the Czech Republic, married and educated women aged 25 to 34 give birth more in the spring.
Factors such as more diagnosis of sexually transmitted diseases in the spring, more condoms purchased, more sexual-related queries in Google searches, and increased abortions point to an increase in sexual activity in people in a certain period.
Another view is that our mating habits have atrophied over time.
We know that due to evolution, unused limbs and functions become atrophied. Things that we don’t need physiologically or hormonally may disappear over time, but in some cases we still keep a part of them.
In other words, maybe we had mating seasons like other living things, but as our environmental and biological factors changed over time, this also blunted over time.
We are complex creatures compared to other creatures.
Although we do not have a specific ‘mating period’, since we are complex creatures; environmental, social, biological and psychological factors can give us a tendency to mate and reproduce.
Writer Dominique Clark says, “People want to be together and connected. That’s why they look for relationships. But it’s just for the desire to have sex, not to get through the harsh winter and produce offspring in good weather.” says.
In short, we cannot deny that there is a periodic increase in reproduction, although there are different opinions.
As in the cats in our house, it is obvious that we mate more in certain periods, although we do not go into heat in certain months and act as if there is no sexuality in our lives when this period passes.
The fact that we develop more emotional bonds compared to other species also plays a big role in our ability to have sex at different times of the year.