Nov. 20, 2006 — Male chimps, unlike their human counterparts, show a distinct sexual preference for females on the riper side of life, an American anthropologist reported in a paper.
Contrary to his own expectations, Martin Muller of Boston University found after years of observation that male chimpanzees consistently sought out the oldest females within a troop for sexual intercourse.
The startling discovery — especially when contrasted with the sexual proclivities of humans, a close evolutionary cousin — suggests that socialization plays a larger role in male-female relations that is commonly assumed.
Given this common ancestry between chimps and Homo sapiens, "the masculine preference for young woman is a derived human trait, probably due to the tendency to form long-term relationships between couples," Muller and his co-authors concluded.
A female chimpanzee reaches sexual maturity when she is about 10 years old, visible in the form of a pink protuberance around the genitals. During the estrous cycle — when, in other words, the female is on heat — it swells considerably, causing males to become aroused.
Males have the run of the field, and will typically copulate in succession with half-a-dozen willing partners, who sometimes literally line up to wait their turn.
But those who have been around the longest are more likely to attract the males amorous attentions.
