Imagine a population of ancestral albatrosses in which the males were highly polygamous and spared no time to help rear the young. Imagine that you were a junior male with no prospect of becoming a harem master. Suppose that instead of striving to be a polygamist, you married one female and helped rear her offspring. You would not have hit the jackpot, but at least you would have done better than most of your more ambitious brothers.
