Chimp study: why females are vocal - or not - during sex

[shereads]

From the NY Times (my boldface and dancing banana)

Chimp’s Sex Calls May Reflect Calculation

By NICHOLAS WADE
Published: June 18, 2008

Intricate as the mating dance may be among people, for other primates like chimpanzees and baboons it is even more complicated. This is evident from the work of researchers who report that the distinctive calls made by female chimpanzees during sex are part of a sophisticated social calculation.

Biologists have long been puzzled by these copulation calls, which can betray the caller’s whereabouts to predators. To compensate for this hazard, the calls must confer a significant evolutionary advantage, but what?

The leading explanation involves the way female primates protect their offspring. Male chimps and baboons are prone to kill any infant they believe could not be theirs, so females try to blur paternity by mating with as many individuals as possible before each conception. (SR notes: How about that? Chimpanzee 'ho's may protecting their babies from infanticide by confusing the murderous daddies! Who knew?) A side benefit is that by arranging to have sperm from many potential fathers compete for her egg, the female creates conditions for the healthiest male to father her child.

The calls that female chimps make during sex seemed to be just part of this strategy. By advertising a liaison in progress, biologists assumed, females stood to recruit many more partners.

But the study, by Simon Townsend, Tobias Deschner and Klaus Zuberbühler, shows that in making calls or not, the females take the social situation into account.

The researchers monitored the lively love lives of seven female chimps in the Budongo Forest of Uganda, making audio recordings of nearly 300 copulations. In two-thirds of these encounters, they found, the female made no sound at all. This finding undermines the thesis that the principal purpose of copulation calls is to instigate rivalry among males, the researchers reported online Tuesday in the scientific journal PLoS One.

Unlike female baboons, who give a staccato whoop at each copulation, the chimps seem much more aware of the social context. Chimps are particularly likely to be silent and conceal their liaisons when higher-ranking females are nearby. They were most acoustically exuberant when cavorting with a high-ranking male.

The reason may be that other higher-ranking males are likely to be around, too, and by advertising her availability to them a female chimp may gain many influential protectors for her future infant.

The calculus changes when higher-ranking females are around because they are likely to attack the caller and break up the fun. To avoid incest, young females leave their home group and try to integrate with neighbors by offering themselves to socially important males. But the resident females tend to be obstructive, perhaps because they see them as competitors for male protectors and desirable feeding areas.

A similar use of copulation calls could once have existed in the human lineage but if so, it may have lost its evolutionary advantages when human societies developed their distinctive system of pair bonding and made intercourse a largely private activity.

Dorothy Cheney, an animal behavior expert at the University of Pennsylvania, said that copulation calls usually occurred in primate species where the females have visible sexual swellings during their receptive period. Because swellings do not occur in humans, it is hard to speculate about the relevance of chimp sexual calls to human behavior, Dr. Cheney said.

Though human vocalizations during intercourse have not been much studied, they do have “a quite elaborate acoustical structure, which suggests some kind of communicative function,” said Dr. Townsend, who is at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. Copulation calls are not a feature of public life in Western societies, but the situation could be different in hunter-gatherer groups, which enjoy little privacy.

“I can imagine that these sort of signals may still be very much perceived by other group members and give a female a high degree of control over her willingness to copulate or let others know her sexual state,” said Dr. Zuberbühler, also of the University of St. Andrews.

The female primate’s strategy of blurring paternity could be useful in human societies, too, especially when the rate of illegitimacy is high. “Whether or not this happens in humans I don’t know,” he said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if something similar went on.”

Female chimpanzees have sexual swellings that remain visible for several days, but they ovulate on just one day. A female gives her copulation calls throughout the period, concealing her most fertile time from the males.

“If she was truly interested in meeting with the best males, she should do all her calling during that narrow window when it matters,” Dr. Zuberbühler said. “But she doesn’t. She conceals the time of ovulation by calling throughout her cycle.”

Sneaky! We women are marvelous, aren't we?

 

[shereads]

Though human vocalizations during intercourse have not been much studied, they do have “a quite elaborate acoustical structure, which suggests some kind of communicative function,” said Dr. Townsend

What immediately comes to mind is the male's need to know who her daddy is.

 

[impressive]

"acoustically exuberant"

I adore that.

 

[shereads]

"acoustically exuberant"

I adore that.

I should have posted a poll with this. See how the AH breaks down by accoustical exhuberance and 'staccato whoops.'

 

[voluptuary_manque]

I should have posted a poll with this. See how the AH breaks down by accoustical exhuberance and 'staccato whoops.'

Oh do! It should prove to be as interesting as my gender preference poll that resulted in that lovely parabollic curve. C'mon, she, do it!

 

[Guest]

Who's your daddy chimp?

(I love this!)

 

[Guest]

Hubby wonders if they are faking it, especially when they are acoustically exuberant?

 

[dr_mabeuse]

I should have posted a poll with this. See how the AH breaks down by accoustical exhuberance and 'staccato whoops.'

Wasn't "Staccato Whoops" an alt of yours?

 

[Guest]

Wasn't "Staccato Whoops" an alt of yours?

No, I've heard of those guys.

They opened for The Bangles in the 1980s.

 

[voluptuary_manque]

No, I've heard of those guys.

They opened for The Bangles in the 1980s.

A friend of mine played bass with them until he lost half his right hand in a bandsaw. Now he "flogs shotguns" in the UK. Anyone want a really good deal on a British-made double gun?

 

[shereads]

Wasn't "Staccato Whoops" an alt of yours?

It will be now.

 

[Nirvanadragones]

*accoustical exuberant coffee spew/ choke *

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Seriously though, this might be interesting, comparing chimp vocalizations with human. Do chimps moan? Groan? Gasp?

I know sheep don't do anything but bleat pitifully.

 

[keeblercrumb]

Rocket? No... just glad to see ya..

Seriously though, this might be interesting, comparing chimp vocalizations with human. Do chimps moan? Groan? Gasp?

I know sheep don't do anything but bleat pitifully.

Unfortunately, Doc, I have never personally fucked a chimp and I guess I will have to take your word on the sheep , as well, so I really don't have any experiential data to offer here. Nor do I plan any research in this area in the near future.... still working my way through the human species for the time being.

But based on that latter experience and our being such close cousins and all, I would hazard a guess that there are probably equal variations on the female chimp vocal response, highly dependent on the male chimp involved, of course.

This is really not the shameless plug it will seem, but I actually recently had an encounter with two sisters with remarkably different acoustic reactions... I wrote about it in a story I just posted here (Please refrain from reading it until I get around to editing out the 1,000 or so grammatical errors in it) (Assuming you would be interested in reading at all, which, given your apparent interest in sheep would be unlikely.. ).

The one sister was a screamer... I mean a screamer... while the other sister was more of a low, guttural groaner.... I think the sister thing probably precludes this being a genetic trait but then they don't much look alike either. Maybe it stems from the quality of porn they may have watched... not sure about that, not much XXX porn here, near as I can tell.

In any case....

It certainly is an interesting subject and one my neighbors are interested in as well, I am sure.

-KC

 

[impressive]

I know sheep don't do anything but bleat pitifully.

*coffee spew*

 

[Guest]

*coffee spew*

Yeah, that one took me by surprise, too.

Bad, Bad Zoot!

 

[shereads]

There are websites for everything. I'm sure there must be a ChimpSexWhoops.com, or the equivalent. Or just visit your local zoo and follow a family with young children - they always happen upon some violent, messy or bizarre animal sex act that has to be explained to the little ones.

Overheard this exchange between a father and daughter at the Galapagos Tortoises pen:

Kid: "Why is that turtle on top of the other one?"

Dad: "He wants to get to the lettuce on the other side."

 

[shereads]

Yeah, that one took me by surprise, too.

Bad, Bad Zoot!

"Baaa, Baaa Zoot!"

 

[voluptuary_manque]

"Baaa, Baaa Zoot!"

We were at the zoo one spring when the bull hippo began to get interested in the cow. As his erection grew one of the teenaged girls in a group next to us muttered to her friend, "That one big enough for you?"

 

[Guest]

There are websites for everything. I'm sure there must be a ChimpSexWhoops.com, or the equivalent. Or just visit your local zoo and follow a family with young children - they always happen upon some violent, messy or bizarre animal sex act that has to be explained to the little ones.

Overheard this exchange between a father and daughter at the Galapagos Tortoises pen:

Kid: "Why is that turtle on top of the other one?"

Dad: "He wants to get to the lettuce on the other side."

Don't we all?

 

[Guest]

"Baaa, Baaa Zoot!"

Well, I was trying to be nice.

 

[Elianna]

We were at the zoo one spring when the bull hippo began to get interested in the cow. As his erection grew one of the teenaged girls in a group next to us muttered to her friend, "That one big enough for you?"

Same thing happened at Sea World. The whales were...ah... swimming and a man cried "look it's having a baby."

His wife turned to him and goes, that's a male.

His response was priceless.

"Wow."

I swear he stood in mesmerized silence for a REALLY long time.

 

[shereads]

Same thing happened at Sea World. The whales were...ah... swimming and a man cried "look it's having a baby."

His wife turned to him and goes, that's a male.

 

[Stella_Omega]

I swear he stood in mesmerized silence for a REALLY long time.

"So that's what nine inches looks like!"

 

[voluptuary_manque]

"So that's what nine inches looks like!"

snort! I've know a couple of guys who could genuinely qualify as nine-inchers and I always wondered, doesn't it hurt?