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Female Putty-nosed Monkeys 'Hire' Males to Defend Themselves from Predators: Study
News 18Researchers with the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Congo Program and the Nouabale-Ndoki Foundation found that female putty-nosed monkeys use males as “hired guns” to defend from predators such as leopards. “To date, it remains unclear whether female guenons have a saying in mate choice, but our current results strongly suggest this possibility.” In the course of this study, a new call type was consistently recorded named “kek.” They found that the males used the “kek” call when exposed to a moving leopard model created by researchers for field experiments. If “kek” calls are population specific, this could suggest that different “dialects” exist amongst putty-nosed monkeys — a strong indicator for vocal production learning, which is fiercely debated to exist in the animal kingdom. Might there even be any parallels to female and male monkeys’ different communication strategies in human language?” The authors say that current results considerably advanced the understanding of different female and male alarm calling both in terms of sexual dimorphisms in call production and call usage.
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