Jake Brooker jake.s.brooker@durham.ac.uk
Post Doctoral Research Associate
Fellatio among male sanctuary-living chimpanzees during a period of social tension
Brooker, Jake S.; Webb, Christine E.; Clay, Zanna
Authors
Christine E. Webb
Zanna Clay
Abstract
Same-sex sexual behaviour has been documented across the animal kingdom, and is thought to reflect and enhance dyadic cooperation and tolerance. For instance, same-sex fellatio — the reception of a partner’s penis into another’s mouth — has been reported in several mammalian species other than humans. Although same-sex sexual behaviour is observed in our close relatives, the chimpanzees, fellatio appears to be very rare — as yet there are no published reports clearly documenting its occurrence. At Chimfunshi Wildlife Orphanage in Zambia, we observed an instance of fellatio occurring during a post-conflict period between two adult male chimpanzees (born and mother-reared at the sanctuary) where one of the males was the victim. We discuss this event with respect to the putative functions of homosexual behaviour in great apes. Given its rarity in chimpanzees, this fellatio between adult males also highlights the apparent behavioural flexibility present in our close relatives.
Citation
Brooker, J. S., Webb, C. E., & Clay, Z. (2020). Fellatio among male sanctuary-living chimpanzees during a period of social tension. Behaviour, 1-11. https://doi.org/10.1163/1568539x-bja10053
Journal Article Type | Article |
---|---|
Acceptance Date | Nov 30, 2020 |
Online Publication Date | Dec 21, 2020 |
Publication Date | 2020 |
Deposit Date | Dec 16, 2020 |
Publicly Available Date | Mar 29, 2024 |
Journal | Behaviour |
Print ISSN | 0005-7959 |
Electronic ISSN | 1568-539X |
Publisher | Brill Academic Publishers |
Peer Reviewed | Peer Reviewed |
Pages | 1-11 |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1163/1568539x-bja10053 |
Files
Published Journal Article
(1.7 Mb)
PDF
Publisher Licence URL
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Copyright Statement
© The authors, 2020. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the CC BY 4.0 license
You might also like
Primate empathy: A flexible and multi-componential phenomenon
(2022)
Book Chapter
Downloadable Citations
About Durham Research Online (DRO)
Administrator e-mail: dro.admin@durham.ac.uk
This application uses the following open-source libraries:
SheetJS Community Edition
Apache License Version 2.0 (http://www.apache.org/licenses/)
PDF.js
Apache License Version 2.0 (http://www.apache.org/licenses/)
Font Awesome
SIL OFL 1.1 (http://scripts.sil.org/OFL)
MIT License (http://opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.html)
CC BY 3.0 ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/)
Powered by Worktribe © 2024
Advanced Search