The Special Column of Primate Behavior

It is a long-term policy to publish SPECIAL COLUMNs in Current Zoology, and I am delighted that the journal is publishing this special column devoted to the topic of Primate Behavior. The eight papers in this section present significant new data and synthesize these findings with existing information on sexual selection of human-being and behaviors of living primates. Dixson et al. found that the hourglass female figure is rated as attractive, and that waist-to-hip ratios, rather than body mass index, plays a crucial role in such attractiveness judgments in Chinese men and women. Sun examined the importance of kin selection in shaping human societies, and found that, in the traditional patrilineal Chinese family, both genetic relatedness and the cultural factor of generation were important in determining kinship status for male agnates (genetically related relatives). For female agnates, however, only genetic relatedness was important. Another surprising finding was that the influence of gender was not as important as genetic relatedness. The most interesting finding in this study, however, was that kin selection and culture (i.e., seniority in generation and age) played vastly different roles in different lineages in the Chinese family. Rizaldi and Watanabe studied the early development of peer dominance relationships in Japanese macaques and described the maternal rank acquisition from infant to juvenile. The infant monkeys may recognize their own social status relative to their opponent's before the onset of aggressive behavior and adjust themselves into the matrilineal rank system accordingly. Jaman et al. examined feeding behaviors and seasonal variation of nutritional content of natural plant diet of Japanese macaques in a forested enclosure. They investigated the determinant factors for bark and fruit consumption regarding variation of their nutritional properties across seasons. This study revealed great behav-ioral flexibility of these monkeys in adjustment to their new environment. Watanabe et al. investigated hand preference of wild moor monkeys in food reaching situations at South Sulawesi, Indonesia. The results indicated the prevailed hand preference at individual level but not at population level. Min ZHANG et al. found that female short-term reproductive potential appears to be an important variable in determining male mating effort, and male Tibetan macaques do exercise mate choice for higher quality females as well as reduce useless reproductive cost. Jian ZHANG et al. addressed postconflict behavior among adult female Sichuan snub-nosed monkeys within one-male units, and found that the pattern of postconflict affiliation demonstrated that the monkey belongs …