The Great Apes

[Tshokwane]

Quote:“We don’t fully understand the mechanism, but based on this study, we propose that females preferentially mate with males who are nice to kids,” Rosenbaum adds.

This will be only my opinion, but I call BS on this sentence.

Not all adult males get to be dominant on a group, and some that do aren't exactly what we can call "good fathers", there are some that are much more tolerant than others, even when not being the dominant male. That said, dominant males on a group will play with and care for the infants, the difference is the degree to each male does it. As it happens with us, there are some that are more naturally inclined to do it.

Quote:And, she adds, “the evolutionary origins of male caretaking in the primate lineage that led to humans may be much older than we think.”

And this? It's laughable. 

Female strategy for mating has always been the same, regardless of the species, especially with mammals.

Their strategy is Hypergamy, that is trading up within the social, dominance and resources scale. That translates in them escaping with or at least shagging up the bad boys, the rugged and uncaring aplha males, while getting the lower ranked, nice beta males to care for and maintain the children.

Now, gorillas somewhat control this when there's only one silverback on a group, but there are many cases where there's more than one, even multiple silverbacks, and even when there isn't, females have been known to shag with the horny blackbacks behind the back of the dominant silverback. Reply