Mothers of Bonobo helicopter stand guard while their sons mate | Science



[ad_1]

Martin Surbeck / Kokolopori Bonobo Research

By Michael Price

In what may be the bonobo take a capricious mom giving her son's number to a cute single woman at the grocery store, the female bonobos are going to the extreme to make sure their son s & # 39; Couples, presenting them to fertile females and even keeping watch while both couple up, according to a new study.

Researchers already knew that mothers of chimpanzees – cousins ​​of the evolving evolution of bonobos – helped their sons in male dominance battles. However, bonobos females, who choose their partner, go even further. Since a select few men of high rank tend to monopolize the pool in their matriarchal society, men of lower rank are essentially forced to leave.

Not wishing to leave their genetic inheritance at random, the mothers of male bonobos bring their sons with fertile females and present them, according to observations of researchers made in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Mothers not only used their own rank to improve the social status of their children, but they also acted as bodyguards during their sons' mating attempts – and even tried to break up mating attempts other men. Overall, researchers whose research report revealed today in the reports of parents who had a mother who was close to helping were three times more likely to father children than men without maternal support. Current biology.

Curiously, girls did not seem to have such maternal support, perhaps because their offspring often disperse and form or join new communities rather than staying close to home. The researchers concluded that it was a fairly simple way to continue to support their genetic lineage without having other offspring.

[ad_2]

Source link