From: Steele, Kirk A (SteeleKA@nafm.misawa.af.mil)
Date: Thu Jan 17 2002 - 01:03:50 MST
Oh heck Yes! Mail me this, please!
Kirk
-----Original Message-----
From: BIll Roh [mailto:billroh@churchofvirus.com]
Sent: Thursday, January 17, 2002 4:39 PM
To: Virus
Subject: virus: Let me smell your behind, baby
So I have been thinking about the whole "hiding ovulution" thing for a while
now, and how it relates to monogamy and love. I wasn't happy with the
explainations - so I asked a pro. Richard Wrangham, Anthropologist, Harvard.
He wrote me back in one day, what a nice guy. The information is interesting
-
if you are interested in his response, it is quoted below. I'll also be glad
to forward his attachment to any interested parties.
good night
Bill
Richard Wrangham wrote:
> >Dear Bill
> >
> Thanks for your comment on Demonic Males!
>
> The idea that "women use the lack of guaranteed reproduction as a
> tool to keep their choice of males around" is close to the way a lot
> of anthropologists would put it... i.e. that when it's hard to tell
> that a woman's ovulating, no single mating is worth much, so a good
> male strategy is to mate-guard until she's pregnant.
>
> But the idea that concealed ovulation is a failure on the part of
> MALES makes little sense. (1) If males could really smell ovulation
> easily (even if it takes oral sex to do it) the pressure to do so
> would be intense. It's hard to imagine we've ignored this ability.
> Maybe worth a research project though! (2) In apes, there's fairly
> clear evidence of female adaptation to producing or not producing
> relevant signals of ovulation. Thus, in eastern chimps, males know
> exactly when the female is ovulating: it's in the final days of her
> sexual swelling, so that's when they compete with each other
> intensely. Whereas in bonobos and western chimps, males don't know
> when she's ovulating: she has her sexual swelling, but there's no
> time during her 2-3 weeks of swelling that the male interest in her
> gets specially strong. (Unfortunately we don't know what the signal
> is - could be chemical, but conceivably something else, such as
> subtle behavior.) (3) It pays females to hide ovulation because in
> primates, females known to be ovulating get coerced and often hurt,
> apart from losing a lot of feeding time.
>
> Incidentally the time when eastern chimpanzee males smell females is
> NOT when she's ovulating. Instead, it's in the week after
> menstruation. Odd. Maybe he's learning when her estrogen is starting
> to rise, and can then predict either when to compete (10-14 days
> later) or how hard to compete.
>
> The idea of mating leading to random reproduction is at odds with the
> pressure on individuals to get THEIR genes passed on. Random
> reproduction could well maintain the species, but a mutation that
> encouraged selfish mating would spread.
>
> Have you seen 'Tree of Origin' (de Waal ed)? I have a chapter in
> there that discusses some of the problems about the evolution of
> mating bonds. I'll attach a word version... see last 5 pages.
>
> Let me know if you do that research project.
>
> Richard Wrangham
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Name: 5WranghamFV.doc
> 5WranghamFV.doc Type: WINWORD File (application/msword)
> Encoding: base64
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