Concealed Mating
- Angela Findlay
- Mar 9, 2021
- 2 min read
Dr Yitzchak Ben Mocha is currently investigating why human and nonhuman species conceal sex and is also promoting evolutionary anthropology research that compares humans and nonhuman species that live in similar social structures (e.g., cooperatively breeding species that live in multilevel societies).
Dr Mocha presented at one of our most recent online seminars at Bangor university.
He began his talk with a definition of what he means by concealed mating: Sensory concealment by hiding the sensory perception both visually and auditory whilst actively engaging in sex, which is not expected to be interrupted by conspecifics.
He puts forward some questions:
Why do humans conceal socially legitimate mating?
Is it universal to humans?
Unique to humans?
What is the function?
To answer these questions he located a database called eHRAF World Cultures and attempted to locate data before some civilizations came into contact with the Western World. He had some difficulty finding the relevant data on whether pairs conceal sex or not.
What he did find:
136 cultures with survey data from this time
87 cross cultural samples
Only 1 culture was found NOT to conceal sex – The Goajiro from Colombia.
From this it can be said that the concealment of sex is universal for humans.
"“Arabian babbler (Turdoides squamiceps) group allopreening in front of a neighbouring group during a border confrontation.”" by BMC Ecology is licensed under CC BY 2.0
Another question was put forward: "Why do Dominant animals conceal mating?" its usually the sub-ordinate individuals that conceal sex not the dominant ones.
The Arabian Babbler lives in social hierarchal groups, they also conceal mating and use sophisticated methods of signalling.
They position themselves where only a potential mate can see them, pick up an object and move their head from side to side. If the potential mate is interested they fly off together and copulate away from the group.
From his study on this species it was ruled out that this behaviour is not unique to humans. It was also shown not to be due to the threat of predation.
Concealed mating maintains cooperation and monopolisation of sexual partners at the same time at the minimum cost.
He concluded that the function of concealed mating is yet to be answered, but there is a possibility that it could be for social reasons in humans but still needs to be proven and tested for animals.
My Thoughts
This was a really interesting talk, it hasn't influenced my future career choice but I enjoy reading about animal behaviour.
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