Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) are highly intelligent animals whose sexual behaviors occur in the context of a complex social environment: Chimpanzees live in multi-male, multi-female communities that can range in size from <10 to approximately 200 members. These communities exhibit a fission-fusion dynamic, where all community members are rarely, if ever, together at the same time; instead, individuals range and forage in fluid sub-groups whose composition changes over the course of hours or days (Goodall 1986; Nishida 2012). Males and females compete for rank in separate linear dominance hierarchies; all adult males are dominant to all adult females (Hayaki et al. 1989; Takahata 1990; Pusey et al. 1997; Muller 2002). Mating is promiscuous, paternity certainty is low, and there is no evidence of direct paternal care (Goodall 1986). Because infanticide by males is sometimes observed, promiscuous mating is most often interpreted as a female strategy to decrease paternity certainty and...
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Boehm, E.E.B., Walker, K.K. (2018). Chimpanzee Sexuality. In: Shackelford, T., Weekes-Shackelford, V. (eds) Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_3407-1
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