Meat Acquisition Skill and Male Reproductive Success in Guinea Baboons

In human foraging societies, hunting skill is often interpreted as a signal of male quality linked to reproductive success through his ability to provision his family and community. Similarly, in some bird and insect species, males offer mates food to indicate their quality as a provider. Among nonhuman primates, however, the relationship between meat sharing and reproductive success is underexplored, leaving the evolutionary origins of this phenomenon unresolved.

Guinea baboons (Papio papio) are a promising model to investigate whether meat sharing signals male quality, since females choose their mates, have been shown to rely on males to catch and transfer prey, and respond to male foraging skill. We combined records of 109 meat-eating events with 9 years of behavioral data to test whether males who more frequently acquired and transferred meat to females had more females in their social units for longer.

Contrary to our predictions, we found no evidence that females preferred males who acquired or transferred meat more frequently, suggesting that meat acquisition is not a signal of male quality in Guinea baboons.

One explanation may be the relatively low frequency of meat-eating events. Another is that females are less dependent on males for meat than previously reported. Our results revealed that nearly half (41%) of female meat intake originated from sources besides her unit male, including the first documented cases of female prey capture (11% of events) in this species. Thus, females likely apply other, more pertinent criteria in mate choice.