AN EXPERIMENTAL EVALUATION OF THE CONSISTENCY OF COMPETITIVE ABILITY AND AGONISTIC DOMINANCE IN DIFFERENT SOCIAL CONTEXTS IN CAPTIVE BONOBOS

Recent evidence shows that females of many species may copy the mate choice of other females, potentially resulting in the cultural inheritance of mating preferences. The best evidence of mate choice copying has been obtained from studies on guppies, but studies on some guppy populations have failed to tind evidence of copying. I report on an experiment in which I found no evidence of male choice copying in a feral Australian population, either in a traditional ʹdichotomous choice tankʹ design or when females had an opportunity to swim and interact freely with the males. Inslead. I found that females tended to avoid the side of the tank on which they had seen a male courting a female. This may not be a mate choice strategy, but possibly a predator avoidance or foraging strategy.