That sounds a lot like the human teenager mating ritual
Quote of note:
...Krakauer has watched how groups of wild turkeys band together to back up one of their brothers -- the dominant one within the brotherhood -- as he displays his attributes to attract a mate.The male, approaching a female in a courtship ritual with two or more of his brothers, will blush brilliantly red and blue about his face and throat, fan his broad brown and white tail, lower his outspread wings and emit loud thrumming noises through his air sacks as he prances in a shuffling strut.
And while he engages in his display, his brothers do so, too -- but silently and without the strut, in a kind of cooperative semi-courtship -- and they also turn to ward off any hostile interlopers seeking to court the same female.
Ultimately, Krakauer found, only the dominant male successfully copulates with the female, while his brothers never get the satisfaction.
Turkey mating games challenge theory of 'survival of the fittest'
UC biologist finds young males help top tom get sex
- David Perlman, Chronicle Science Editor
Thursday, March 3, 2005
The sex lives of wild turkeys in a remote Carmel Valley nature reserve offer striking evidence that animal altruism pays and that cooperation rather than combat can often be the best way to keep a species flourishing.
A graduate student at UC Berkeley, Alan H. Krakauer, has been carefully observing hundreds of the birds and their offspring for more than four years and has learned a lot about the turkey mating game.
While male birds and animals often engage in bitter battles to establish which of many rivals will dominate and mate with a favored female, the wild turkeys that Krakauer studied join together as a band of brothers to help their leading sibling succeed in his romantic quest.
Krakauer's research is being published today in the journal Nature, and his results go far in validating a long controversial theory that adds a concept called "kinship selection" to the classic Darwinian version of natural selection -- which has often been corrupted to mean merely "survival of the fittest."
It also offers a clear confirmation of the concept of "altruism" that the late, famed Harvard entomologist E. O. Wilson saw as an inborn and widely useful trait in the procreation of many creatures as varied as insects and humans.
At UC Berkeley's Hastings Reserve Biological Field Station in the remote reaches of Carmel Valley's Santa Lucia Mountains, Krakauer has watched how groups of wild turkeys band together to back up one of their brothers -- the dominant one within the brotherhood -- as he displays his attributes to attract a mate.
The male, approaching a female in a courtship ritual with two or more of his brothers, will blush brilliantly red and blue about his face and throat, fan his broad brown and white tail, lower his outspread wings and emit loud thrumming noises through his air sacks as he prances in a shuffling strut.
And while he engages in his display, his brothers do so, too -- but silently and without the strut, in a kind of cooperative semi-courtship -- and they also turn to ward off any hostile interlopers seeking to court the same female.
Ultimately, Krakauer found, only the dominant male successfully copulates with the female, while his brothers never get the satisfaction.
