Women as bread winners
March 18th 2010 07:19
So much for males being the bread winners. According to new research based on monkey responses we may, at a basic and instinctive level, see women as the bread winners.
A team led by biologist Erica van de Waal, from the University of Neuchatel in Switzerland, conducted research amongst wild vervet monkeys in South Africa. The team trained dominant male and female monkeys to teach other monkeys a simple box-opening task. The researchers made a comparative study of the responses to the teachings of the dominant males versus the dominant females.
The monkeys, they found, were far more likely to try, and to succeed in, opening the box if their demonstrator had been a female.
"Females are core group members with higher social status than males, and more knowledge about food resources," van de Waal in the research report, just published in a British Royal Society journal. Male monkeys have a tendency to wander off looking for mates in other groups — the old greener grass over there syndrome — whereas females tend to return to the home group.
The research, van de Waal concluded, revealed valuable insights into "the evolution of traditions and culture in species living in stable groups, including humans".
news.sciencemag.org; image: www.yoursafariexpert.com
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