Papaya for the Best Sex Partner

They say 'love goes through the stomach' …or through a shopping spree, for that matter, 'enjoying' the man's 'loaded' credit card... But since chimps don't go shopping, the only available sector remains…the food.

A study made on wild chimps in the West African village of Bossou in the Republic of Guinea has found that males steal desirable fruits from local farms and orchards to get the best sex partners. "We believe the males may be using crop-raids as a way to advertise their prowess to other group-members, especially the opposite sex. Such daring behavior certainly seems to be an attractive trait and possessing a sought-after food item, such as papaya, appears to draw even more positive attention from the females." said lead researcher, Dr Kimberley Hockings from the University of Stirling's Department of Psychology.

This research is the only one observing regular sharing of plant foods by unrelated wild chimps. "It is unusual behavior as even though the major part of chimpanzees' diets consists of plant foods, wild plant food sharing (defined as an individual holding a food item but allowing another individual to consume part of that item) occurs infrequently. However, in chimpanzee communities that engage in hunting, meat is frequently used as a 'social tool' for nurturing alliances and social bonds.", said Hockings.

"This research shows that chimpanzees at Bossou use crop-raiding as an opportunity to obtain and share desirable foods, providing further insights into the evolutionary basis of human food sharing. In humans, the pursuit of certain foods is also strongly sex-biased; for example, it has been proposed that men in hunter-gatherer societies acquire large and risky-to-obtain food packages for social strategizing and to garner attention."

Fruit-stealing males shared most of the loot with females of reproductive age; especially with a female (within the group) which is extremely attractive for the male chimps, taking part in the majority of consortships (where a chimpanzee couple retreats to the periphery of their community for the male to be able to receive exclusive access to mating). A consortship increases a male's chances of fathering the offspring, as otherwise, both males and females are highly promiscuous, in many cases a female mating with several males at a time.

"The male who shared the most food with this female engaged in more consortships with her and received more grooming from her than the other males, even the alpha male. Therefore the male chimpanzees appear to be 'showing off' and trading their forbidden fruit for other currencies, i.e. 'food-for-sex and -grooming' ", said Hockings.

Cultivated plant foods were shared much more frequently than wild plant foods at Bossou, even if getting them meant risky raiding crops, that induced anxiety in the males (rough scratching and other symptoms of anxiety), due to their exposed locations and the human presence.