Behaving like animals
It’s one of the longest-playing shows on television, though every episode looks pretty much the same.
A man stands in front of a podium, expressing regret, somewhat vaguely, for letting down his family and his constituents.
By his side, a woman, often dressed in pale blue, looks on with a pained expression.
Who knows what she’s thinking? Like the rest of us, she’s only human. Maybe she’ll forgive him, maybe she won’t.
Maybe she’ll run for president.
If she were a Gelada baboon, however, chances are that big lug would never have sex again.
Instead, he’d spend his declining years doing the baboon equivalent of housework and caring for another male’s offspring. Assuming she and the other females didn’t just chase him off a cliff.
That, at least, is the message one is tempted to take from “What Females Want and Males Will Do,” a two-part presentation of PBS’ “Nature” premiering tonight that suggests in the animal kingdom, females are often in charge when it comes to sex.
It’s probably not a good idea to extrapolate too much from the complex mating rituals of other species when confronting our own complicated sex lives. But if the choice is between a red-faced politician and a red-chested baboon, there’s a lot to be said for the baboon. Sure, he gets to have sex with multiple females. But whatever he tells himself, he’s not in complete control.
In the primate societies that Chadden Hunter studies, the male “is just a sex toy, as long as he can keep it up,” the wildlife biologist told reporters during a PBS press conference that surpassed anything dreamed up by ex-New Jersey Gov. Jim McGreevey or ex-New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer for sheer explicitness.
Things aren’t easy, either, for the sage grouse, whose colorful males turn themselves into the equivalent of feathered bagpipes in hopes of attracting a plain Jane female.
Most never get lucky, though thanks to Gail Patricelli and the robotic grouse she calls her “fembot,” a few maybe got further than expected.
“Usually five or six males out of 150 that are out there that will copulate at all. Most of the rest of the guys … are doing their dance all day long, and they will never get to mate,” said Patricelli, a biologist at the University of California, Davis. “And there’s usually one or two males that will mate with 38, 39 females during this two- or three-week period of time. So (the others) get to court the robot, and as far as they’re concerned, they’ve managed to court a female (even if) they don’t get to copulate with her.”
Patricelli said it wasn’t that difficult to convince males that her bird on what looks like a model-railroad track was the real thing.
“They’re out there trying to copulate with cow pies most of the day,” she said, “and so the bar (was) set relatively low for me trying to make a realistic female.”
Plus, “they’re willing to court. … I mean, they don’t court the cow pies, so they’re not completely stupid, but they will court the robot.”
And if that doesn’t put a $4,000-a-night hooker into perspective, I don’t know what will.