母猩猩是什么意思 时尚双语:母猩猩交配时通常都会保持安静

时尚双语:母猩猩交配时通常都会保持安静  

英国科学家周三(6月18日)宣布，雌性黑猩猩在交配时通常都会保持安静，否则闻声而来的雌猩猩会惩罚她们，因为她们抢走了最好的雄猩猩。
Female chimps（<非洲>黑猩猩） keep quiet during sex to keep other females from finding out and punishing them for mating with the best males
British researchers said on Wednesday.
The study of chimp copulation(交配) calls also found that females seem more concerned with having sex with as many mates as possible rather than just finding the strongest male as a way to confuse paternity (父亲，父亲的身份)and secure future protection for offspring.
"They are trying to make the high-ranking males think they are the father
" said Simon Townsend
an evolutionary psychologist at the University of St. Andrews in Britain
who led the study. "If you confuse paternity
they are more likely to provide that female with future support."
The findings show that chimps -- our closest living relatives -- can use their calls flexibly in response to social factors while knowing more about the apes could help in conservation efforts
he added.
Researchers have long been interested in mating calls of different animals
especially primates (灵长类). A mon hypothesis is that females use such calls to advertise to prospective males they are ready to mate
which in turn incites petition that leads to the strongest partner and highest quality offspring(后代).
But it appears the female chimps are also a touch more savvy（了解）about the opposite sex
according to the findings published in the journal PLoS One.
"The female chimps we observed in the wild seemed to be much more concerned with having sex with many different males
without other females finding out about it
than causing males to fight over them
" Townsend said.
The team
which included researchers from the Max Planck Institute in Lepzig
took urine samples from females in a group of about 80 chimps under observation in the Budongo Forest in Uganda able to show when the animals were fertile.
They also recorded the mating behavior and saw that the female chimps called out for sex partners for as many as 12 days during their reproductive cycle
even though they were only fertile for about 4 days of it.
Yet they also only called out about a third of the time when mating
much less than other primates. Low-ranking females were also more likely to keep quiet during sex
probably to keep female petitors at bay
the researchers said.