distractable chimps, aggressive antelopes

Brief news flash from the world of animal research:

Recently, researchers reported that chimpanzees are sometimes more patient in waiting for a reward than humans are. This is surprising, given that people have long thought that our "amazing" abilities to delay gratification were due to our evolution-granted bigger foreheads. But now*, it turns out that chimps employ some of the same strategies used by kids to get more cookies by waiting - they sit on their hands, or they play with toys. If you haven't seen the videos produced by Mischel's work on delay of gratification in kids (an ability that later predicts SAT scores), you're really missing out. BUT we're all missing out on the chimp story because the researchers didn't post any videos! (I think half the reason I follow primatology research is to watch chimps doing smart things)

Usually, in those old nature documentaries, you see the males fighting for weeks for the right to inseminate the choicest females. But no one has really seen a reversal of this dynamic. Turns out, this mate competition reversal is predicted to happen when the species is promisuous, there are a lot of females, and the guy tends to run out of sperm. Here the guys want to mate with all the females so they can spread their limited seed. But the ladies want the good guys all to themselves. So, what to they do? The African topi antelope women get persistent and aggressive. Getting too angry is a turnoff, though, as the guys counterattack or run away. The researchers made an understated note that these reversed "conflicts probably often go unnoticed because males, in contrast to females, can avoid mating without conspicuous resistance."

* Chimpanzees use self-distraction to cope with impulsivity. T.A. Evans and M.J. Beran, Biology Letters 3, 2007.
+ Reversed Sexual Conflict in a Promiscuous Antelope. J Bro-Jørgense. Current Biology, December 18, 2007.