A Unique Mating Ritual

The habits of a bizarre primate.

By RIVA RILEY

It is here that I would like to detail a bizarre phenomenon that I myself have many times witnessed and been assured of its prevalence and importance for young individuals of certain populations of the human species. The human species is known for a great many idiosyncrasies, not least of which is the use of strange symbols to communicate with conspecifics, but even so, the ritual to which I am referring is a particularly peculiar addition to the otherwise merely strange habits of this bizarre primate. I will attempt here to describe it and speculate as best I can on the function of the various elements involved, but I wish you to remember that what I’m about to describe can only truly be understood by direct observation, an activity I do not wish on anyone.

The setting is singular for its freakish, almost hellish atmosphere. It is known as a “formal,” or more casually, a “dance,” and it is in a dark, noisy lair that this mass mating exhibit takes place away from eyes of the human elders. The setting, though garish, only hints at the fundamental strangeness of the ritual. Heart-rattling music blasts through speakers, and the room is dark except for intermittent flashing of strobe and spotlights. Once one is acclimated to the sensory disorientation, however, the young individuals materialize out of the gloom, and their strange behavior makes the setting seem unextraordinary.

First, I will describe their attire. The young males wear fancy suits or tuxedos, while the females don colorful dresses or gowns. It seems that this opulence is meant as a display of resources, as both sexes tend to wear jewelry and the males often sport outfits made of expensive fabrics and bring symbolic bouquets of costly flowers to the female. By advertising their resources, each individual attempts to prove his or her superiority in mate choice and ability to contribute to offspring rearing and maintenance of mate and young; I also feel that the act of bequeathing a plant’s reproductive organs, the flowers, to the female is a way of showing the male’s readiness and willingness to mate. The females accomplish this by wearing low-cut garments that advertise the size of their mammary glands to show their fitness in infant care. Furthermore, the females also wear unusual shoes that take the form of an extension to the heel. These shoes are highly uncomfortable and often cause pain; the females likely wear them to demonstrate their ability to withstand the pain of childbirth.

After the ritual begins, the males exhibit primarily through an apparently unusual but actually standardized set of behaviors in establishing a mating pair and preventing other males from making advances. Often individuals enter the mating ritual already in a mating pair, and males assert their claim on the female by very possessive and suggestive dancing motions. This often takes the form of upright movements simulating copulation, which seems to serve a dual purpose for both the male and female. Paradoxically, these movements help establish the permanence (this being a relative term, in this case, as mating pairs rarely stay together long enough to produce and care for young after this ritual) of the mating pair and display the relation to others; however, these movements also seem to advertise their reproductive fitness and perhaps reveal sexual prowess to other individuals.

These actions would be highly distasteful to the human elders, and if the elders (the participants’ parents, primarily) were aware of this behavior, they would certainly disapprove and might use withholding of resources to control the young ones’ behavior and suggest different mate selections. It is for this reason that the sole attendants at these rituals are young individuals who have recently entered reproductive age. In this way, the young individuals can display a much greater freedom of choice in mate selection, without the influence of their progenitors. The effect this has on population dynamics is uncertain, but it certainly changes the way sexual selection functions in this primate. The rigidly defined artificial selection regime that has been occurring in human populations around Earth for hundreds of years seems to be coming to a gradual end, and young humans are using new rituals, including the one I have described here, to overturn this practice and return to a more primitive, but perhaps more advantageous, mode of mate selection. While I mean only to provide scientific observation, I will venture the comment that returning to sexual selection may not be harmful to the human species; however, this bizarre ritual might prove detrimental. I foresee that a more beneficial alternative may arise in the near future, or at least a gentler version of this ritual that does not require such a high level of intoxication to successfully complete.

Riva Riley ‘12 (rjriley@fas) is not a huge fan of formals, but can at least find them entertaining.

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