Strategic Gorilla Sex May Explain Human Monogamy

Stony Brook University primatologist Diane Doran-Sheehy discovered something intriguing about the sneaky mating behavior of female gorillas that may explain human monogamy: how female gorillas use strategic sex to her advantage!

Female gorillas use sex as a tactic to thwart their rivals, new research suggests. Pregnant apes court their silverback male to stop other females conceiving.

"It seems to us that mating is another tactic that females use to compete with each other – in this case to gain favour with another male," says Diane Doran-Sheehy, a primatologist at Stony Brook University in New York.

Her team chronicled the sex lives of five female western lowland gorillas and one silverback almost every day for more than three years. "We wondered if, basically, [pregnant] females can mimic [ovulating] females and dupe the male into mating with them and distract him from what those other girls are doing," Doran-Sheehy says.

This kind of competitive behaviour may even help explain how humans evolved into a mostly monogamous species, she says.

Ewen Callaway of New Scientists has more: Link

Previously on Neatorama: 30 Strangest Animal Mating Habits