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Chimpanzees Exchange Meat For Sex
the_therapist writes "A team from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, studied chimps in the Tai Forest reserve in Ivory Coast and discovered that chimpanzees enter into 'deals' whereby they exchange meat for sex. Among the findings are that 'male chimps that are willing to share the proceeds of their hunting expeditions mate twice as often as their more selfish counterparts.' They also found this to be 'a long-term exchange, so males continue to share their catch with females when they are not fertile, copulating with them when they are.'"
We formulized it and called it marriage though.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
I need to head to the closest butchers shop!
The musings of just another geek and his junk.
MMM.... I love chimp meat.... definitely fuck someone for that!
The toad can't burp - and for some reason can't fart either, so it swells up and eventually explodes. --Anonymous Coward
I'd rather use MY meat for sex.
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I've tried the exchange method before... the woman took my money, and gave me nothing in return... what the hell are the male chimps doing differently?
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
Is that a banana in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?
Going to a restaurant.
There is a vegetarian girl that I'm interested in. I wonder if I'd get sex in exchange for an offering of meat?
Butchers get all the chicks.
Task Mangler
So, who here is gonna argue against THESE similarities between chimpanzees and humans?
Common ancester? That's unpossible...
I wish... but it seems that only hot chicks ever ask me to fix their computers *sigh*
This behavior has been quite well documented in bonobos, which until recently were considered chimps or dwarf chimps. I'm not sure what makes this article newsworthy, except that we all like to read about meat and sex...
Try reading a copy of "The Hunting Ape" by Stanford... It's fascinating in covering hunting and culture in apes (including trading food for sex).
From what I've read, I'd also disagree with the article that meat is so valuable to their diet. They LOVE meat, but other research suggests that the amount of energy expended on hunting compared to what they gain in protein/food is a net negative. Hunting is also high risk and includes getting injured in the process.
...at a high rate of give and take.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
I can believe this is a new discovery for the Common Chimpanzee. But for their close relatives the Bonobos, I saw documentaries decades ago showing not just the long term pair-bonding/mating-behavior related food-giving described in TFA, but outright prostitution. As in a male chimp comes up to a female with a banana in his hand, kinda tugs on her, she reacts neutrally, he hands her the banana and tugs again, they go off and have sex. And lest you hold on to the notion that this was still mating-related behavior, the sex in question was oral.
Ah, Bonobos. Gotta love those crazy nympho primates. I could be wrong but I think the Common Chimp is closer to us genetically, but I think the Bonobo is closer to us psychologically. I was going to say socially, but I don't know many human societies where genital rubbing is used as a greeting or where orgies break out whenever they acquire food.
The enemies of Democracy are
A similar study found chimpanzees trading food for sex clear back when I was a teenager. This is about 20 years late to be "news".
Damn, we call it the 'oldest profession' and had no idea just how far back it went :P
"I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist"
All the hottest chimps get fat. Seems like a bad system to me.
Even Ford Fairlaine intuitivley must have known, when he promissed to slam a cheese buger down his girls throat.
I always wondered why Michael Jackson had daily deliveries from the butcher.
I mean, that's how it's done, right?
Begin Rhetorical Question>> The thing that confuses me... the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology? Evolutionary Anthropology would be pretty low on my list if I was going to list things associated with Max Plank. Why on earth did they name an Anthropology Institute after a Theoretical Physicist? Don't get me wrong, Plank is one of the great names in physics, and one of the most brilliant men to have lived in the 20th Century... but Anthropology?!? Is there some connection between evolution and Quantumn Mechanics I seem to have missed in all those years in College? End Rhetorical Question
I too was once a hardcore geek, intensely focused on the science and methodology of getting a girl to go out with me to the exclusion of all other thought, so I can relate. The nerds at the Max Planck Institute have my total sympathy and I know what they're going through and why they are unable to focus on the particle physics stuff in favor of this stuff.
They just need to relax and be themselves, actually ask a few girls out (shower and brush teeth first, obviously) and realize that it's not the end of the world if the first dozen or so say no. The joy of a fantastic newfound experience will happen eventually guys, just hang in there!
I always wondered where that phrase came from...
Sex, now there's something Slashdotters don't know about.
... chimpanzees exchange meat for meat?
about exactly how they word their craigslist ad when they do it.
It seems an objective way to see if a potential mate has the capability of bringing home the bacon (sorry for the pun), thereby being a good indicator on whether the male could provide for a family that would result from copulation (unless they have safe sex ;) ).
If the male chimp doesn't have enough to share, he isn't probably very good at getting food - and you wouldn't want to propagate those genes. Did they check whether the chimps that shared the most also gathered the most?
So why is it being made to sound like prostitution, when it clearly is more like survival of the fittest - the female bangs the best male?
...we throw in some flowers. Maybe a show.
rj
Sometimes you go on a date, pay for an expensive meal, and the chicks put out. Sometimes they don't. Looks like it works the same in the chimp world.
... with apologies to Hustle and Flow.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
There was an article some years ago about monkeys (not sure if chimpanzees or not) being trained to use money.
Researchers taught them that discs of metal could be exchanged for food and such things. They got all sorts of interesting behaviors out of it, including the monkeys attempting to fake the money.
One uncomfortable discovery was discovering that some of them were actually using that money to pay for sex.
This seems even better than this one. Food for sex is a straightforward exchange. Tokens that can be used to obtain food for sex is more complicated, and shows a deeper understanding.
when ppl speak of women putting out so little. Back in my 20s and 30s, most of the women that I dated wanted sex every night (a couple pushed for sex 2-3x a day) and gripped that the guys that they used to date were horrible in bed. They said that they quit putting out because THEY were not getting satisfaction. It was even more so with divorced women. I suspect that more guys need to change.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Our behaviors aren't really all that advanced, as humans, and
in order for us to get much further we are going to have to
acknowledge that, instead of build bigger and better in order
to please some part of ourselves that is afraid to grow..
If you're interested in facts I'll tell you what they are and I'll give you sources - Chomsky on The Big Idea
I'm having a BBQ next weekend, what kinds of meat are they offering?
For us humans, the key thing (at least for males) is to avoid the marriage trap. Outside of marriage, the resources-for-nookie exchange holds true at market rates. Imbalances are corrected by the laws of microeconomics.
But once locked in a marriage contract, a human male MUST provide resources under penalty of law, while the female is not obligated to do...anything. The predictable result is the epidemic of sexless marriages in the U.S. and other developed countries.
So, just beware the marriage trap. It's like signing an oil futures contract where you're required to deliver oil at $12 a barrel, indefinitely. You'd be a fool to sign either a $12/bbl oil contract, or a marriage contract.
I find it interesting that the author of the BBC article is assuming that the male chimps are trading meat for sex. The original article goes on to state that female chimps don't hunt, so they can't obtain meat on their own. When the male chimps donate meat to the female chimps, they don't just get more sex, they also increase the chances that the female chimp will take in enough protein and calories to bear a healthy baby.
Humans look at the male chimp's giving the female chimp meat as "trading" meat for sex, but there are a lot of other constructions that could be put on that behavior. He could just as easily be trying to assure that his offspring will be healthy. Or trying to assure the health and well-being of a female that he's come to care about.
The original article says that people had tried to find meat-for-sex exchanges in chimps before and failed, because they didn't give the animals enough credit for long-term planning. They looked to see if Chimp A gave meat to Chimp B, then had sex with her two minutes later, and they didn't find that. The current researchers succeeded because they took a longer-term view and counted meat-giving and sexual activity over time. But it's possible that they're still not giving the animals enough credit -- what if the meat-giving isn't trading meat for sex but is something else entirely?
Observations of primate behavior will never tell us anything until we learn to just report what we see the animals doing, then think of every plausible reason why they might be doing that, rather than assuming that the animals aren't capable of doing what we do.
Middle-aged professional woman still plays computer games. Film at 11.
Sex is good exercise. Though, being a slashdotter, you might not know that.
Now I ain't sayin' she a gold digger...
"Ah dessert! Chilled monkey brains!"
(Because, after all, anything that thinks about sex so much must be delicious!)
Having a good marriage is probably 25% likely.
But here's the problem....
Hubby or Wife asks spouse for sex and is rejected. Ego hit. And unavoidable.
Enough ego hits, and you just don't WANT to risk another rejection. Deadly Embrace condition.
Meanwhile, the guy or lady you see on the sly only at lunchtime on thursdays is there for *one* thing. If you are not feeling well, you cancel it in advance and no rejection. That sex is *incredible* over a long enough period. No rejections, no ego damage to your sex drive. And then the idiots split up with their spouse and go into a "real" relationship with their sex partner and over 75% are split up within 12 months.
Sometimes I think we should marry our spouse and then we and our spouse find other sex partners. Maybe not the first child bearing marriage but any second or third marriages.
Women and men lose their sex drives for a particular person (re: Calvin Coolidge's famous rooster discussion with his wife).
However- if you are a man and lost your sex drive big time- GET YOUR HORMONES checked. A lot of men find they are down in the 200's to 300's and should be in the 500's . As a testicular cancer survivor (16 years! Woo woo! would have been dead 2 years earlier because no cure), this hit me when I was 43. I got treated and turned back the clock to like I was a mid 30 year old again.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Here's said article.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/05/magazine/05FREAK.html?_r=1&pagewanted=2
No, but I did throw granola at a deaf person once
Think twice next time you think to feed that funny chimpanzee you just met, you might regret it.
Males are providing for females and makes their chance of survival go up and then the females wants to have those genes?
or
Males buy sex from females with meat?
Tough one...
Any chimp who offers meat for sex is too lazy to masturbate!
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
And let me tell ya, the erotic services section suffered when the chimps started typing ads.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
There are two stories here. The johns are trying to get laid, so it suggests sex for pleasure, which is rare among animals. And the hookers suggest they are willing to barter for food instead of working to acquire it directly.
Maybe a third story, which is they are somehow able to come to an agreement over each party's responsibilities without using words, giving researchers hope that someday they will be able to visit hookers without fear of finding a cop instead.
I'm not really seeing how it necessarily implies sex for pleasure. There is nothing in the behavior that cannot be explained by selection pressure for increased number of offspring.
The male gives the female food today and then has the ability to mate with her twice as often in the future, thereby increasing his chances of fathering her offspring.
The female accepts the food from a male capable of hunting and bartering and gains high-value calories that she otherwise would have limited access to (TFA mentions that female chimps have less success hunting). Her offspring are likely to be fitter due to her improved nutrition and the higher chance of being fathered by a fit male.
Many species have behaviors that amount to "I protect/provide food for you long term, and I have better chance of mating with you." Stallions have their mares. Lionesses provide meat to their pride and have the right to the sperm of the the strongest male available: the badass who fended off everyone else.
This article shows a cognizance of the value of a specific act (providing meat) and the acceptance of a long term obligation/bond. Pleasure doesn't need to enter into it.
she knows what a monkey does for sex. she has two kids.
A monkey? In the White House? You're probably thinking of the previous occupant.
People think we're so much superior than other animals when our advancement is marked by easier ways to get our impulsive 'needs'.
Mmm, nope. There goes the hope of the meat industry to beat the credit-crisis!
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
The point of TFA is that outright prostitution does NOT exist. Giving meat does not produce results there and then and does not guarantee them in the future. It's not a pay-to-play deal.
What is observed with chimps is something far more interesting, as it shows an awareness of delayed gratification on the part of the males and of long-term strategies by the females.
Basically, meat is nutritionally high-value food compared to anything the females can get otherwise. This means that giving meat to the females improves the health and strength of the females. The female doesn't reward the male for the meat, but rather rewards the male for superior long-term care and support.
In other words, it's not an exchange, nothing is being bartered, and no individual gift by either side is connected in any way to any individual gift by the other. Instead, it looks much closer to long-term strategies by both sides where a move might be planned weeks or months in advance.
To compare chimps with bonobos is like comparing (theoretically intelligent) economists with stock market day-traders. I'd argue the chimps are actually smarter than economists, as chimps have fewer housing bubbles and the meat supply doesn't go bankrupt as often.
For all the primitiveness of the exchange, this indicates an extremely high level of intelligence that is beyond a fairly large percent of the human population. Humans do NOT do well on delayed gratification.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
(Sorry really couldn't resist...)
I'm not a biologist, but sex for pleasure == any time the female is not in estrus. Just about all mammals only mate when the female is fertile.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
If you RTFA in its entirety, the point basically is that marriage is a form of long-term prostitution. Did they really need to study chimpanzees to find that out?
And I hope, by that, they weren't referring to boobs.
What's the difference?
Would you like to touch my monkey? Touch him! Touch my monkey!
LeoPolus Web Design: http://www.leopolus.com
Ahh... yes. And the reason that guy is taking you out to dinner is because he's interested in the long-term survivability of your (future) offspring.
The argument is that the point of a sex drive is that it takes care of such things automatically without you realizing what is going on. You can bounce around through life believing you are an autonomous, choice-driven being when the exact opposite is usually the case.
People are machines. Only the lucky ones who realize this have a chance of growing beyond the boundaries of the operating system.
-FL
what i was thinking??
fat hooker monkey...nobody tell 4chan, but feel free to use the phrase as a derogatory remark.
Good people go to bed earlier.
What do the "gay" monkeys do? This researched only talked about the male monkeys having sex with females. Is homosexual activity amongst monkeys not normal that someone would not show research on it? Do the gays monkeys just exchange meat and sex in all sorts of ways? What happens when groups of monkeys, male and female get together for a meat and sex orgy? I would hate think if whole families of monkeys just get it on. And if the monkeys would engage in Humanality (like Beastiality, just in reverse.) I think after this point, the meat and sex issue get a little obscured.
oh sh*t, one of the chimps has escaped the jungle study group and has started trolling as -jcr, perhaps he'll find some vowels for his nick the next time he hits the keybaord...
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
I thought that sharing meat was the same thing as having sex?
All lewdness aside, is it really an exchange? Perhaps the sharing food establishes a relationship that makes them mate more. Or maybe frequent mating makes them more likely to share meat because they grow fond of one another.
Either way, I wish this worked on my wife. Sigh, I knew I should have married someone who looked like a monkey.
What they did find was that, "amazingly", chimps who were generous with their food, and shared it whether a female was up for sex or not, ended up getting laid twice as often. ... and so on.
There's a whole range of possible reasons for this: it might be that females with high-meat diets get horny more often than those with dietary deficiencies, it might be that males who tend to share tend to be the better hunters, and therefore more physically fit and perhaps more attractive, it might be that by sharing, a chimp gives the impression of being more successful at hunting whether they are or not, it might be that males who show themselves to be more interested in long-term nurturing relationships are seen as better ones to have children with than the unreliable stingey ones
If we're going to anthropomorphise for a moment, I guess it means that wealthy, generous, "playboy" chimps who enjoy sharing their wealth with those around them and invest in long-term friendships have less trouble mating than those who don't have spare meat to share, or who hoard what they have for themselves.
I think that the anthopologists might like to make a study of two interesting concepts that appear to be relevant, here, but which seem to have eluded them:
It's possible that the chimps might be more adept in these social skills than the anthropologists watching them.
Eric Baird
to bringing home the bacon. :)
That settles the "humans came from apes" debate. It's the same in the primate world as in the human world: you always end up paying for it one way or another. Primate prostitution. An older profession than we could have even imagined.
The 19th century researchers were "shocked" by the super-sexuality of the various chimp species. (as if humans are substantially different)
If they had the higher reasoning skills of humans, they would recognise that meat and sex are both perishable. The correct trade is to exchange unneeded meat for gold, which can later be exchanged for meat when your hunt comes up short. Sex? Who needs that? The survival of the species is irrelevant to the individual.
Take her to Morton's. The Filet Mignon is killer.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
These chimps be Pimpanzees!
This post was made in complete sincere seriousity; as such any attempts to derive humour are doomed to instant failure.
congress will probably find the need to regulate this also....
Perhaps they got the idea from Kingdom of Loathing?
* Q
P.S. If you don't get this note, let me know and I'll write you another.
If he gives her some of his meat, he gets to give her his meat.
Your girlfriend wants steak.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Give them a month and they'll be as smart as most of the black race.
Chimps are also known to be violent, to rape, kill other chimp tribe members and their own infants, and to eat each other. That explains everything about human sexual relationships, right? No? Their conclusions (and many of the comments here) say much more about the evopsych researcher/slashdot commenter than about chimps or humans in general.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
A woman whose body works well (no endometriosis, abuse issues, etc.) can climax every 2 to 3 minutes for an indefinite period.
I'm sleeping with a woman like that right now (she's 29) but she's the first woman of that type I've experienced in my 20 years of bangin' and 13 sex partners. The next-most-similar woman only climaxes 2-3 times before being tapped out (she's 37), therefore I don't think it's a very common thing! Interestingly, they both have similar anatomy where it counts, and all of the sexually "ordinary" women I've been with are completely different.
One huge piece of advice... get a massage table ($300). So much better than a bed. Soooooo much better than a bed. You can adjust the height by inches (so you hit the right spots inside her) and instead of doing push-ups (every frikkin muscle in the body except the inner ear) for an hour, you are only screwing (so mainly abs, gluts and triceps).
It's true that any position that doesn't tire us out makes us much better performers! With Miss Unlimited Climax, a key thing is the shape and size of her body letting me move the right way without getting tired. I have to say, with heavier women, it's impossible to find the same efficiency. I'm a slim, light guy, and it's been a problem for me that *almost all* single women within dating range for me age-wise are overweight. Lots of women with pretty faces that I would just never want to be naked with. It just sucks.
Agreed, but there is no evidence that sex out of estrus is happening here.
From TFA: "This is a long-term exchange, so males continue to share their catch with females when they are not fertile, copulating with them when they are."
Lots of the intelligent design practioners, isnt this what they practice. But substitute meat for money. There are similarities between chimps and humans believe it or not.
If they continue trading during unfertile periods, and only copulate during fertile ones, they are trading meat for descendency, not for sex. Human inclination bias in the interpretation of results.
So I guess that makes it, without a doubt, the oldest profession in the world...
The 14'th amendment was was created to be an option.
And it's the first strip too: Give Her More Meat.
The phenomenon you describe (split, then the new becomes not so new anymore, split again) is something everyone should understand. The key is to not get locked into a 24/7 situation at all. People need space.
In Soviet Ivory Coast, chimps trade sex for meat!
?? uhh.. (redundancy alarm rings) Wait- that didn't make much sense.
OK- Let's try again:
In Soviet Ivory Coast, chimps trade meat for YOU!
Well... better, but still needs improvement...
.
- aqk
F U
I wonder if they haggle?
Our culture doesn't get smarter, it just finds new ways of being retarded.