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Primates and Cetaceans pp 385–408Cite as

Non-conceptive Sexual Interactions in Monkeys, Apes, and Dolphins

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Abstract

Primates and dolphins exhibit comparable examples of all categories of non-conceptive sexual behaviors, including sexual interactions involving immature individuals, those involving individuals of the same sex, and copulation during the non-conceptive period. Although mammals of other taxa also perform non-conceptive sexual behaviors, the fact that there are so many reports of non-conceptive sexual interactions among higher primates and dolphins suggest a link between the nonreproductive use of sexual behaviors and high intelligence. This link might be because the greater role of learning in sexual behavior expands the possibility for sex to be incorporated into a variety of non-conceptive functions. Non-conceptive sexual behaviors seem to reflect or be influenced by important social factors, including affiliative relations and alliance between individuals of the same or different sex, high social status of females, within-group or between-group tension resolution, mate selection, and infanticide prevention. Animals may employ non-conceptive sexual behaviors to control various important aspects of their relationships with others which they cannot control with other social behaviors, which suggests that instances of non-conceptive sexual behaviors may serve as keys to understanding important aspects of the social relationships or social structure of the species.

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Acknowledgments

Studies on chimpanzees and bonobos by Furuichi and Hashimoto were mainly funded by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) Grants-in-aid for Scientific Research, JSPS Core-to-Core program, JSPS International Training Program, JSPS Asia-Africa Science Platform Program, JSPS Institutional Program for Young Researcher Overseas Visits, Japan Ministry of the Environment (JME) Global Environment Research Fund, JME Environment Research and Technology Development Fund, the National Geographic Fund for Research and Exploration, and Toyota Foundation. We thank Drs. Takayoshi Kano, Toshisada Nishida, Juichi Yamagiwa, Tetsuro Matsuzawa and other members of Primate Research Institute and Laboratory of Human Evolution of Kyoto University, and Drs. Mwanza Ndunda, Mbangi Norbert Mulavwa and other stuff of Ministry of Scientific Research of D.R. Congo for their continued support for our studies. The data on dolphins analyzed by Connor were funded by an NSF Dissertation Improvement Grant and grants from The National Geographic Society and a Fulbright Fellowship to Australia.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Primate Research Institute, Kyoto University, 41-2 Kanrin, Inuyama, Aichi, 484-8506, Japan

    Takeshi Furuichi & Chie Hashimoto

  2. Biology Department, UMASS-Dartmouth, North Dartmouth, MA, 02747, USA

    Richard Connor

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  1. Takeshi Furuichi
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  2. Richard Connor
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  3. Chie Hashimoto
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Correspondence to Takeshi Furuichi .

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  1. Graduate School of Science Laboratory of Human Evolution Studies, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan

    Juichi Yamagiwa

  2. The Swire Institute of Marine Science School of Biological Sciences, The University of Hong Kong, Shek O, Hong Kong SAR

    Leszek Karczmarski

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Furuichi, T., Connor, R., Hashimoto, C. (2014). Non-conceptive Sexual Interactions in Monkeys, Apes, and Dolphins. In: Yamagiwa, J., Karczmarski, L. (eds) Primates and Cetaceans. Primatology Monographs. Springer, Tokyo. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-4-431-54523-1_20

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