Yeah you heard that right. The most efficient way to get females is to give them meat. You give meat, you get sex, it’s that simple. At least that’s what the scientific evidence says for one particular group of individuals that live in the forests of Africa: chimpanzees. 😛
“Males observed in the West African nation of Ivory Coast shared monkey meat with females that exhibited the pink swellings on their rear ends that indicate ovulation and sexual availability. More surprising was that males shared meat with females that didn’t have sexual swellings, perhaps in hopes of future success, the researchers say. The sex “may not necessarily occur immediately—it could occur sometime in the future,” said study co-author Cristina M. Gomes, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany.” quote: National Geographic
So you see here, our primate cousins, the chimpanzees figured out that the best way to get it on is to go hunt, get some meat, and then share it with females, who will then thank for it by doing it like they do it on the Discovery Channel.
Maybe that’s where the tradition of guys inviting girls out for dinner or buying them drinks developed from. Men are digging deep down into their genetic memory and using tried and tested strategies from way back in prehistoric times. 🙂 Too bad those don’t seem to work anymore.
However, there are some who dispute this theory. Other scientists did some research and found no correlation.
“They found no evidence for immediate meat-for-sex trades, nor did they find that males who shared more meat got more sex.“One explanation for this discrepancy could be the cost of short-term exchanges”, Gomes says. Males who hunt risk ceding their access to oestrous females to other chimpanzees. Long-term exchanges could be a way of gaining the benefits of meat for sex, without taking such risks.” quote: New Scientist
Well, I think both things might be true. Some chimp males try to play the gentleman by going hunting and sharing their meat with others, while the females don’t always appreciate this. While these chimps are out hunting, there are probably some leecher chimps who try smooth talk the female chimps into giving it up. With many females it probably works.
This is not that different from the human world. It is unfortunately not a rare occurrence that a guy who has been working hard all day, comes back home and finds his wife in bed with another guy, most likely some unemployed smooth talker. 🙂
It’s fascinating how many parallels there are between humans and the animal world, and especially our closest cousins, the primates. So based on these similarities, scientists try to find out more about human behavior by studying apes and monkeys.
One example to illustrate how research done on monkeys is applied to human behaviors could be the recent research on gender preferences among Rhesus monkeys. The research showed that boy monkeys preferred boy toys, while girl monkeys preferred girl toys. This means that there is a difference between males and females based on hormones and is hard-wired into our brains, which to me makes sense, since there are very obvious physiological differences between males and females, as well as differences on what types of roles males and females play in the animal world (for example only females can give birth to babies).
““We were quite surprised by how closely the preferences of male and female monkeys for human gender-stereotyped toys paralleled those reported in children,” said Kim Wallen, PhD, study co-author. “Because monkeys are not subjected to advertisements, or to criticism for toy choice, this suggests the monkeys choose the toys on the basis of the activities the toys encourage. Thus, differences in activity preference vary between males and females,” Wallen summarized.“ quote: Emory University
The study of nature and especially human cognitive behavior and evolution are subjects that fascinate me greatly. Back in my first year of university, one of the electives that I took, was called Human Evolution. In the class we discussed various theories on how humans evolved, but one of the most interesting things was trying to surmise the evolution of human behavior based on the behavior of primates and monkeys.
One of the most memorable moments from the class for me was one day, when I came a bit late to class. I walked into the class and noticed that there was a giant screen with some sort of a nature movie playing. I looked up and saw that it was a video of two chimps going at it Discovery Channel style. It is not in every class that you get to watch monkey porn. 🙂
Read more: What you can learn from the chimps: traits of the alpha male leader
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