There’s a funny line in the movie Little Miss Sunshine where the grandfather character, played by Alan Arkin gives his grandson Dwayne the benefit of his questionable wisdom.

They’re sitting in the back of the family van, 15-year-old Dwayne looking as bored as a conscious human being can, when Arkin gives him the gold.

“Listen to me kid, I got no reason to lie to you,” he says. “Don’t make the same mistakes I made when I was young. Fuck a lotta women, kid, not just one woman, a lotta women.”

Needless to say there was a huge laugh in the theatre and I could almost hear fathers thinking, “that’s exactly what I’ll be telling my son.”

We know there are serious political and religious reasons for keeping men and women monogamous while every one of a our instincts cry out for the opposite.

I don’t deny that promiscuity and its cousin, adultery, can cause problems for humans: broken hearts, shattered marriages, sexually transmitted diseases and bad country and western music.

If promiscuity is such a bad thing, why has this behaviour not been bred out of us over millennia through natural selection?

If remaining monogamous was truly an evolutionary plus, why are we not seeing a higher variant of humanity for whom sleeping around is not an issue; because when they mate, they imprint on each other so profoundly that they cease to find alternative mates sexually exciting?

Some animals (penguins, swans, mallard ducks) have managed this evolutionary leap, so why are we dragging the chain?

Perhaps the answer is because “slutting” around is actually good for the species.

Anthropologists tell us that less than 50 years ago, Canela women, who live in Amazonian Brazil, enjoyed the delights of as many as 40 men one after another in festive rituals. When it was time to have a child, they’d select their favorite dozen or so lovers to help their husband with the all-important task.

Even today, when the dalliances of married Bari ladies in Columbia and Venezuela result in a child, they proudly announce the long list of probable fathers.

Perhaps the reason we haven’t evolved in this area is that while it makes sense for a woman to have most of her children with one stable protector and provider, it makes greater evolutionary sense to slip another child into the mix, by another father who has exhibited good genes; is hot-looking, smart or can kick a football really far or displayed other, socially-predicated signs of desirability such as wealth or having his own network show.

Personally, I don’t think that promiscuity is the danger that many portray it to be, when practiced safely; it teaches people what they do and don’t like in the bedroom which, according to every womans magazine, is the best way to judge whether your relationship’s doing well.

It’s also fun, perfectly natural to try before you buy, and ensures you don’t have lingering “what ifs” when it does come time to say I do.

Wanna 'slut' around a little?