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Linesnap99
Paragon
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- Joined
- Mar 31, 2020
- Posts
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...."A revelatory set of studies in the 1980s and 1990s by Richard Connors, who is now at the University of Massachussetts, Dartmouth, on bottlenose dolphins in Western Australia showed how these extremely friendly and social creatures formed alliances to guard the females of their group against rape.
While one way to interpret such findings would be through attributing traits of chivalry and gallantry to these affable creatures, a more pragmatic interpretation is realizing that the males move as much to restrict sexual access to their females. Competing groups of dolphins may raid rival territories for their females and some may even pretend to be defenders only to turn aggressors.
Here’s how Barbara Smuts, a professor at the University of Michigan and a longtime observer of social relations in several primates—including hamadryas baboons, chimpanzees and orangutans—describes, in a seminal popular-science article in Discover magazine in 1995, masculine coercion of the female.
“…Sometimes, as I saw in Gombe (a wildlife reserve in Tanzania), a male chimpanzee even attacks an estrous female days before he tries to mate with her. Goodall (Jane, a pioneering ethologist) thinks that a male uses such aggression to train a female to fear him so that she will be more likely to surrender to his subsequent sexual advances. Similarly, male hamadryas baboons, who form small harems by kidnapping child brides, maintain a tight rein over their females through threats and intimidation. If, when another male is nearby, a hamadryas female strays even a few feet from her mate, he shoots her a threatening stare and raises his brows. She usually responds by rushing to his side; if not, he bites the back of her neck. The neck bite is ritualized—the male does not actually sink his razor-sharp canines into her flesh—but the threat of injury is clear. By repeating this behaviour hundreds of times, the male lays claim to particular females months or even years before mating with them. When a female comes into estrus, she solicits sex only from her harem master, and other males rarely challenge his sexual rights to her.""...
While one way to interpret such findings would be through attributing traits of chivalry and gallantry to these affable creatures, a more pragmatic interpretation is realizing that the males move as much to restrict sexual access to their females. Competing groups of dolphins may raid rival territories for their females and some may even pretend to be defenders only to turn aggressors.
Here’s how Barbara Smuts, a professor at the University of Michigan and a longtime observer of social relations in several primates—including hamadryas baboons, chimpanzees and orangutans—describes, in a seminal popular-science article in Discover magazine in 1995, masculine coercion of the female.
“…Sometimes, as I saw in Gombe (a wildlife reserve in Tanzania), a male chimpanzee even attacks an estrous female days before he tries to mate with her. Goodall (Jane, a pioneering ethologist) thinks that a male uses such aggression to train a female to fear him so that she will be more likely to surrender to his subsequent sexual advances. Similarly, male hamadryas baboons, who form small harems by kidnapping child brides, maintain a tight rein over their females through threats and intimidation. If, when another male is nearby, a hamadryas female strays even a few feet from her mate, he shoots her a threatening stare and raises his brows. She usually responds by rushing to his side; if not, he bites the back of her neck. The neck bite is ritualized—the male does not actually sink his razor-sharp canines into her flesh—but the threat of injury is clear. By repeating this behaviour hundreds of times, the male lays claim to particular females months or even years before mating with them. When a female comes into estrus, she solicits sex only from her harem master, and other males rarely challenge his sexual rights to her.""...
Binh Nguyen's Blog
Binh Nguyen's Blog A blog about my interests including science and technology, defense, intelligence, politics, music, and so on.
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