Sex and Reward Hypothesis
Schroder reviews a hypothesis by Symons' and Hill's that hunting males exchanged meat for sex with females. Females who continuously mimicked estrus may have benefited from more meat than those who did not. If this occurred with enough frequency, then a definite period of estrus would have been lost, and, with it, sexual signaling specific to ovulation would have disappeared.
Read more about this topic: Concealed Ovulation
Famous quotes containing the words reward and/or hypothesis:
“That is the real pivot of all bourgeois consciousness in all countries: fear and hate of the instinctive, intuitional, procreative body in man or woman. But of course this fear and hate had to take on a righteous appearance, so it became moral, said that the instincts, intuitions and all the activities of the procreative body were evil, and promised a reward for their suppression. That is the great clue to bourgeois psychology: the reward business.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“It is a good morning exercise for a research scientist to discard a pet hypothesis every day before breakfast. It keeps him young.”
—Konrad Lorenz (1903–1989)