Can You Say — Anthropomorphizing?

Back in ancient times when I was young there was a cartoon cliche that showed up in magazines and advertising. It was a picture of a caveman with a big club dragging a woman by her hair. Funny, huh?

Of course, even cavemen have to sleep sometimes, and then the cavewoman could drop a rock on his head, but still, it’s a really unpleasant joke. There was a lot of role anxiety in those days, and when Religion wasn’t telling us how God created Man and Woman, there was Science. Scientists were forever studying ‘primitive tribes’ and drawing conclusions that Man and Woman were naturally this way, or naturally that way, depending on the researcher’s bias. It didn’t occur to anyone that it’s biased to assume that so-called ‘primitive tribes’ are full of natural folk who don’t have no culture.

When there wasn’t a convenient tribe, another club for beating women into the cave was animal studies. Animals have social organization, and primates especially form complicated relationships when they live in groups. Researchers studied different species, finding aggressive social networks where the dominant male ruled, and other species where grooming and socializing kept the group together. Scientists published papers. If they were anthropomorphizing, or even if not, it would be distorted in the popular press. By the time it hit the news it would often be headlined, in the words of Rudy Cheeks — ‘That Proves It!’

So all this is background for a silly piece of fluff from the Yahoo science news–

Cost of coitus: Male monkeys pay for sex
Wed Jan 2, 1:52 PM ET

Selling sex is said to be humankind’s oldest profession but it may have deep evolutionary roots, according to a study into our primate cousins which found that male macaques pay for intercourse by using grooming as a currency.

Michael Gumert of Nanyang Technological University in Singapore made the discovery in a 20-month investigation into 50 long-tailed macaques in Kalimantan Tengah, Indonesia, New Scientist reports on Saturday.

On average, females had sex 1.5 times per hour.

But this rate jumped to 3.5 times per hour immediately after the female had been groomed by a male — and her partner of choice was likely to be the hunky monkey that did the grooming.

Market forces also acted on the value of the transaction.

If there were several females in the area, the cost of buying sex would drop dramatically — a male could “buy” a female for just eight minutes of nit-picking.

Now since our simian cousins don’t have balance sheets and bank accounts, and since the friendly little creatures are trading physical contact, I don’t know how this writer is so sure that there is a buyer and seller, and who is doing which. Maybe the Invisible Hand of the market is tickling monkeys too, which would make it kind of like the Hand of God, but I’m not convinced. You can check out the original article on New Scientist, but it’ll cost you — the scientists don’t give it away for free. You’ll have to pony up $4.95. You could offer to groom them. Tell me if that works.

Perhaps I am wrong to worry that this news item will show up on millions of office emails, but having lived through the bad old days, I’ve seen this Tarzan movie before.`

5 thoughts on “Can You Say — Anthropomorphizing?”

  1. This kinda strikes me as a premise-first study: I would like to prove X about animal instinct, let me now identify animal behavior that can be interpreted to back that up.

    Still, grooming or no grooming, those macaques really put out!

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  2. i had to wonder why the researcher didn’t conclude that the male monkeys were selling their grooming services. and yes, i also am impressed by the macaques’ stamina.

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  3. As I recall, the “caveman hair dragging” mode of courtship was largely a creation or perversion of the cartoon Alley Oop. Such behavior would be impossible for the more progressive Fred Flintstone. Alley was more of a Neandertal (preferred to “Neanderthal” by the way) stereotype and the result of some very bad 19th Century physical anthropology and interpreting the first Neandertal skeletons in an archaic way (no pun intended). Neandertals had an artistic, sensitive side as it turns out, and made ornaments, buried their dead, and took care of their injured and old folks. Only once in a while did they cook each other (much like our modern folks did) and their brains were actually larger than ours.

    The sexual prowess of monkeys and apes, especially chimps has long been documented and has long been envied by graduate students. Unfortunately, I suspect ultrafrequent coitus is a different evolutionary pathway with different purposes (darn) than our ancestors took. We chose to walk on two hind legs on the ground and not stay in the trees. This enabled us to free our arms for carrying and making tools and weapons, in an open environment where males likely needed to defend the smaller group of females carrying young. Because of this, sex became a sometimes thing, not a forever thing in a more secure environment. Culture, speech, tool making had its price. Fortunately with more time on our hands, and the availability now of both male and female stimulation from “viagra-like” medications, we can imitate our “cousins” if we wish–progress is wonderful, is it not.

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