Abstract
Playback experiments simulating the presence of intruder male lions elicited cooperative behaviour of male coalitions resident with prides of females. Resident males approached the broadcast roars on all occasions when more than one male was present for the experiment, and only failed to approach in three of eight cases when a single male faced the roars of three intruders. Three routes to cooperation were tested: kinship, reciprocity and mutualism. These results suggest that approaching the roars of strange males is a cooperative behaviour, and that this cooperation is not conditional on either the kinship or the behaviour of a male's companions. Cooperation in male lions instead appears to be based on mutualism.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 95-105 |
| Number of pages | 11 |
| Journal | Animal Behaviour |
| Volume | 49 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Jan 1995 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:We are grateful to K. McComb for help with field work, comments and discussion. We thank the government of Tanzania for permission and facilities. J.G. was supported by grants from the graduate school of the University of Minnesota and the Dayton Natural History fund. C.P. and A.E.P were funded by NSF grants 8507087 and 8807702, the National Geographic Society and the Klipsch Corporation.