Food For Thought - Or For Sex

In the Kingdom of chimpanzees, the females are nearly always the ones to choose and pick the males they want to mate with. These are also usually the same ones who have shared their prey willingly, or specially, with them. Not all that different from the human's dine and wine routine is it? According to the investigation carried out in Tai, the National Park of Ivory Coast, this conduct is not just observed when the females are on heat. It's quite habitual of the male to offer part of their capture during the female' 'cool' periods. After they have shared some meat together, the male's chances to copulate with the female greatly increases when the female is on heat weeks or months later. 'If a male shares his meat with one particular female always, his chance is doubled.' so wrote the investigators Christopher Boesch and Cristina Gomes, of the Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology of Leipzig, Germany, in the electronic magazine Plos One, where day before they presented their conclusions. "This indicates that chimpanzees interchange food for sex, and they do it as long term installment." Or is it investment? The investigators also reminded us that in the human society of the hunting era, the best hunters were always the ones that could conquer or collect most females. This data also affect our vision of relationships between men and women. Similar studies show that the benefits the women received in the hunt-for-food society was the motor of relation between successful reproduction and the ability of the hunters. Bosch and Gomes have observed chimpanzees of the Tai National Park for 22 months, during which there were 90 episodes of hunting, 262 gifts of meat offered by male to females, and 262 copulations. My goodness, surely girls today don't give themselves immediately after a hamburger and a Coca Cola? Do they? However, not all males show the same inclination to share their prey. Nor only the most generous share their food with all females. The most significant part of the statistics of the observation shows that gift of meat to the female is what explains the most success of the reproduction, not the variation like the status of the female or male, nor due to a special friendship between the 2 particular chimpanzees. These variations let us think that's the cause of coupling, but it's mainly because the high ranking males are usually also the bigger and stronger, and therefore able to capture more prey. Apparently, being generous is more important than being good looking or powerful. If you are a chimpanzee that is. Tags:chimpanzee,sex

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