ANT211H5 Chapter Notes - Chapter 4: Estrous Cycle, Marsupial, Weaning
Document Summary
In baboons, the skin around the female"s vagina swells and turns a bright red colour visible at a distance. The female also gives off a distinctive smell and crouches in front of him and presents her hindquarters. Most other female animals are equally aware of their own ovualation and advertise it to males with equally bold visual signals, odors, or behaviours. Human females usually do not have signs of ovulation. Women can be taught to detect ovulation by monitoring their body temperature or mucus. Most animal species confine sex to a brief estrous period around the advertised time of ovulation. Monogamous gibbon couples go several years without sex, until the female weans her most recent infant and comes into estrus again. Human practice sex on any day of the estrus cycle. Women solicit it on any day, and men perform without being choosy about whether their partner is fertile or ovulating.
