Aggressive male chimps more likely to be fathers
0 Comment(s)
Print
E-mail Xinhua, November 14, 2014
Aggressive male chimpanzees who consistently bully females tend to father more babies with their victims, a new study said Thursday.
|
|
|
Chimpanzee males are known to direct surprising amounts of aggression toward their female group mates. |
The findings, published in the U.S. journal Current Biology, were based on a long-term study of interactions between chimpanzees in the famous Gombe National Park in Tanzania.
"These results seem to suggest that males are selected to be aggressive toward females to increase their paternity success, which explains why male-female aggression is observed in so many chimpanzee populations," first author Joseph Feldblum of Duke University said in a statement.
Chimpanzee males are known to direct surprising amounts of aggression toward their female group mates, according to the researchers, but previous studies of mating success had found evidence both for and against the presence of sexual coercion in wild chimps.
To help settle the debate, Feldblum and his colleagues looked to a chimpanzee community living in the Gombe National Park that had been under close observation for the last 50 years.
The researchers knew not just who had mated with whom, but also who the biological fathers of nearly all chimpanzees born in the community since 1995 were, based on genetic tests of paternity.
Go to Forum >>0 Comment(s)