0_equals_true wrote:
For common chimp I'm not sure if the apha female necessarily is the eldest but certainly the most experienced at having kids.
In the study I saw, social rank didn't appear to matter, just age.
Quote:
In the new work, researchers examined this idea by studying male mate preferences within the Kanyawara chimpanzee community in Kibale National Park in Uganda. The researchers found that, in contrast to humans, male chimpanzees prefer older females to younger ones. They found that, compared to younger females, older females were more likely to be approached for copulation, were more often in association with males during estrous periods, copulated more frequently with high-ranking males, and gave rise to higher rates of male-on-male aggression in mating contests.
The only natural justification for our behaving differently seems to be that humans have menopause, and chimps don't. So for us, older females might be a waste of reproductive effort, while that's never true for a chimp. But that difference has only existed for a few hundred thousand years, so it's kind of speculative to assume that it's already resulted in major changes to human behavior. Culture may play a much larger role.
26 Oct 2007, 5:28 pm
