" Lesbian Japanese monkeys challenge Darwin's assumptions"

[Chris Burford]

Not to my surprise I see that this item has already appeared on LBO-talk. 
But I am not clear what the Independent article is arguing comes out of 
this research: a greater emphasis on social selection, or that sexual 
selection could be led by females as well as men? Did Darwin really deny 
the latter?

The Telegraph

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/02/19/waa19.xml&sSheet=/portal/2003/02/19/ixportal.html

includes this comment from the interestingly-named Dr Roughgarden:

>Dr Joan Roughgarden, a biologist at Stanford University, said the macaque 
>was just one of many species that did not fit Darwin's theory of sex selection.
>
>Female langur monkeys promiscuously mated with many males, for instance. 
>Homosexuality in animals - at least 300 invertebrates practise it - was 
>also unexplained by Darwin.
>
>Dr Roughgarden said that a more comprehensive theory of sex selection 
>should take into account social as well as sexual selection. Mating could 
>function to build and manage relationships as well as to reproduce. 
>"Female choice, I am pretty sure, has much more to do with managing male 
>power than it does with trying to obtain good genes."


So are examples of same sex activity a bye product of whichever sex is more 
active in initiating biological reproduction, or are they part of social 
reproduction?


Chris Burford
London