English
 
Help Privacy Policy Disclaimer
  Advanced SearchBrowse

Item

ITEM ACTIONSEXPORT

Released

Journal Article

Why hide? Concealed sex in dominant Arabian babblers (Turdoides squamiceps) in the wild

MPS-Authors
/persons/resource/persons201296

Ben Mocha,  Yitzchak
Department of Primatology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Max Planck Society;

/persons/resource/persons72862

Mundry,  Roger
Department of Primatology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Max Planck Society;
Department of Developmental and Comparative Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Max Planck Society;

/persons/resource/persons72904

Pika,  Simone       
Department of Primatology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Max Planck Society;

External Resource
No external resources are shared
Fulltext (restricted access)
There are currently no full texts shared for your IP range.
Fulltext (public)
There are no public fulltexts stored in PuRe
Supplementary Material (public)
There is no public supplementary material available
Citation

Ben Mocha, Y., Mundry, R., & Pika, S. (2018). Why hide? Concealed sex in dominant Arabian babblers (Turdoides squamiceps) in the wild. Evolution and Human Behavior, 39(6), 575-582. doi:10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2018.05.009.


Cite as: https://hdl.handle.net/21.11116/0000-0001-6BBE-2
Abstract
Striking uniformity exists in humans' preference to conceal sexual activity from conspecifics' view. Yet, little is known about the selective pressures acting upon its evolution. To investigate this question, we studied the cooperatively breeding Arabian babbler (Turdoides squamiceps), which has been suggested being the only other species where dominant individuals conceal sex regularly. We examined whether birds indeed conceal sex and tested different hypotheses postulating that sex concealment functions to avoid predators, signal dominance status, or to avoid social interference. The results showed that the birds concealed sex in all observed cases of copulation, did not prefer to copulate under shelters and concealed mating solicitations from adult conspecifics. In addition, subordinates did not attack dominants who courted the respective female. Hence, none of the tested hypotheses explains these results satisfactorily. We postulate that dominant Arabian babblers conceal sex to maintain cooperation with those helpers they prevent from mating. Empirical desiderata for testing this ‘Cooperation-Maintenance’ hypothesis are discussed.