Female tactics to reduce sexual harassment in the Sumatran orangutan ( Pongo pygmaeus abelii )

Fox, Elizabeth

doi:10.1007/s00265-002-0495-x

Cited by 106 publications

(143 citation statements)

References 58 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

131

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…If a mating is unlikely to lead to conception, females may reduce resistance simply to avoid the costs of male aggression (Smuts & Smuts 1993). However, aggression within the mating context in orangutans has not been reported to lead to physical wounding of females (MacKinnon 1974;Rijksen 1978;Galdikas 1981;Schü rmann 1982;Mitani 1985;Schü rmann & van Hooff 1986;Fox 2002;Utami et al 2002;Knott & Kahlenberg 2007); thus the costs of resistance appear to be low (Knott 2009). …”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The use of resistance behaviour by females is nonetheless surprising given that female orangutans are rarely successful at preventing copulations (Fox 2002). Resistance may produce other advantages.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…(b) Behavioural data The characterization of force versus cooperation during mating is problematic as matings are lengthy and often contain elements of each (Rijksen 1978;Galdikas 1981;Fox 2002). Thus, categorizing matings as simply forced or cooperative can obscure the complexity of these interactions.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Early studies emphasized the use of forced copulation by unflanged males, suggesting that it was an alternative mating strategy necessary to fertilize avoidant females (Rijksen 1978;Galdikas 1985b;Schü rmann & van Hooff 1986). While larger samples gleaned from multiple populations support a female preference for flanged males, they reveal that these males also frequently use force to obtain copulations, whereas unflanged males are often successful in copulating without the use of aggression (Mitani 1985;Fox 2002;Utami et al 2002;Knott & Kahlenberg 2007). These studies suggest that, rather than being a behavioural trait of the unflanged male morph, forced copulation is a contingent response of male orangutans to resistance by females, who may vary in their willingness to copulate with males even within the developmental categories, with respect to previous mating interactions, or in response to their current reproductive condition (Mitani 1985;Fox 2002).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Female reproductive strategies in orangutans, evidence for female choice and counterstrategies to infanticide in a species with frequent sexual coercion

et al. 2009

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Intersexual conflicts over mating can engender antagonistic coevolution of strategies, such as coercion by males and selective resistance by females. Orangutans are exceptional among mammals for their high levels of forced copulation. This has typically been viewed as an alternative mating tactic used by the competitively disadvantaged unflanged male morph, with little understanding of how female strategies may have shaped and responded to this behaviour. Here, we show that male morph is not by itself a good predictor of mating dynamics in wild Bornean orangutans but that female conception risk mediated the occurrence and quality of male -female interactions. Near ovulation, females mated cooperatively only with prime flanged males who they encountered at higher rates. When conception risk was low, willingness to associate and mate with non-prime males increased. Our results support the hypothesis that, together with concealed ovulation, facultative association is a mechanism of female choice in a species in which females can rarely avoid coercive mating attempts. Female resistance, which reduced copulation time, may provide an additional mechanism for mate selection. However, coercive factors were also important as prime males were frequently aggressive to females and females used mating strategies consistent with infanticide avoidance.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Female reproductive strategies in orangutans, evidence for female choice and counterstrategies to infanticide in a species with frequent sexual coercion

et al. 2009

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Possible direct benefits accruing to female mandrills that mate with brightly colored males may include protection from harassment and sexual coercion by other males (e.g. Fox, 2002), or access to preferred resources (e.g. Janson, 1984), although the latter seems unlikely.…”

Section: Future Directionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Do Female Mandrills Prefer Brightly Colored Males?

2005

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Further information on publisher's website:http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10764-005-5305-7Publisher's copyright statement:The nal publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10764-005-5305-7. Use policyThe full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. using data on peri-ovulatory sexual behavior during the 1996 mating season for all males aged 8+ yrs (n = 5) and all parous females (n = 9) living in a semi-free-ranging colony at CIRMF, Gabon. Resultsshowed that brightness of male coloration was significantly positively correlated with time spent within 2m of females, female responsibility for proximity, number of sexual presentations received, % approaches accepted by females, and % inspections that females cooperated with. Females also groomed only the brightest male. Behaviors indicative of female preference did not correlate significantly with male dominance rank, and partial correlations confirmed that the influence of male color on female behavior was stronger than that of male rank. When the influence of male dominance rank was controlled, correlation coefficients between female behaviors and male mating success were high and positive. In further support of the hypothesis that females show mate choice for brightly colored males, independent of dominance rank, I report an unusual case where the alpha male fell in rank without loss of coloration. This male experienced no significant change in female responsibility for proximity, sexual presentations received, or female reaction to approaches or inspections, although he was no longer observed to mate. These preliminary observations suggest that female mandrills attend to differences in male secondary sexual characters, and show mate choice in favor of brightly colored males. As brightly colored males are also dominant, this reinforces the influence of male-male competition on male reproductive success, and may explain the very high reproductive skew in males of this species, and the extraordinary appearance of male mandrills.

show abstract

Orangutans

Knott

2015

The International Encyclopedia of Human Sexuality

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Orangutans have a number of unusual features that contribute to their highly diverse sexual behavior. Like humans, they do not have an estrous, or sexual, swelling, and males probably cannot tell when a female is ovulating. They have the longest interbirth interval of any mammal, leading to intense male–male competition over mates. Males can occupy two sexually mature morphological forms: flanged and unflanged. Both flanged and unflanged males may force females to copulate, leading to one of the highest rates of forced copulation in animals. Female choice is evidenced by females actively seeking flanged males when they are ovulating and through their higher likelihood of mating with nonpreferred males when they are not ovulating, possibly serving as a paternity confusion strategy. Orangutans show a range of other sexual behaviors, such as oral sex, by both males and females, very long copulatory periods, face‐to‐face copulation, and some same‐sex sexual interactions.

show abstract

Female tactics to reduce sexual harassment in the Sumatran orangutan ( Pongo pygmaeus abelii )

Cited by 106 publications

References 58 publications

Female reproductive strategies in orangutans, evidence for female choice and counterstrategies to infanticide in a species with frequent sexual coercion

Female reproductive strategies in orangutans, evidence for female choice and counterstrategies to infanticide in a species with frequent sexual coercion

Do Female Mandrills Prefer Brightly Colored Males?

Orangutans

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About