Snack attack: Kinshasa, an adult female chimpanzee, holding a piece of (colobus monkey) meat she received some minutes before from Utan, an adult male chimpanzee
Credit: Cristina M. Gomes
Ian Gilby is an anthropologist at Harvard University in Boston, U.S., who studies chimpanzee behaviour. He praised the research but was cautious about the interpretation of its results.
"This is one of the most rigorous tests of the hypothesis that chimpanzees trade meat for sex, and adds to the growing body of data that demonstrates the considerable behavioural diversity among chimpanzee subspecies," he said.
However, Gilby added that researchers disagree over the extent to which female chimpanzees are able to realise their mating preferences, and whether mate choice is a response to male aggression.
"If this is the case, it would seem puzzling that male chimpanzees would need to use meat in order to entice females to mate with them," he said.
