Northwestern Social Networks 101
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"Biggest not always the daddy in mating game "

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Post  Kristina Youmaran Sun May 31, 2009 2:36 pm

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn4003

The above article talks about how the dominant male (specially in salmon and quails) aren't always preferred by the females. As the study showed, virgin females preferred the dominant males, but females who had some sexual experience preferred the "losing" male. The reason for this is rather straight-forward. The dominant males tend to be more aggressive or abusive with the females. So, the female with experience would recognize this in later mating times and avoid the more aggressive male. The salmon case differs a bit from the quail case, but it's interesting to see how even though in the animal world many believe that females mate with the winner of "battles", this is not always true.

Kristina Youmaran

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Post  Augustus Tsai Sun May 31, 2009 5:16 pm

This indeed very interesting in animal species. If we modeled this as a normal form game, with the players as a virgin female and a sexually experienced female, and the choices to be dominant male and less dominant male. We can say that the dominant strategy for each player is certain. Virgins will go with the dominant male, while the sexually experienced will go with the losing male. This is so because each player believes her choice has a higher utility than the other choice. If they pick the same one, they both get nothing. It was interesting to see this kind of thing in the salmon and quail species. I wonder if this applies to other species?

Augustus Tsai

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