Tag Archives: sexual selection

Sexual Conflict in Nonhuman Primates: A Female’s Perspective

Posted on by One comment

by Lisa Barrett Sexual conflict is the clash between evolutionary interests of males and females. It stems from anisogamy, the discrepant sizes of the male and female gametes (sperm and eggs, respectively). Think: eggs are bigger and more costly to produce; sperm is cheap and plentiful. These gametic differences lead to (sometimes) opposing reproductive interests and strategies for the sexes– a

Read more

Getting to the Bottom of Baboon Bottoms

Posted on by Leave a comment

I have received some interesting reactions when I tell new acquaintances that I study baboons. Recently, someone very enthusiastically asked, “Those are the animals with the HUGE pink butts, right?” They are indeed. And I’m actually quite intrigued by those “pink butts.”   A more technical term for this is “exaggerated sexual swellings.” Around the time of ovulation, females of

Read more