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Phoenix666 writes:

Female vervet monkeys manipulate males into fighting battles by lavishing attention on brave soldiers while giving noncombatants the cold shoulder, researchers said on Wednesday.

After a skirmish with a rival gang, usually over food, females would groom males that had fought hardest, while snapping at those that abstained.

When the next battle came along, both those singled out for attention and those aggressively shunned would participate more vigorously in combat, according to a study published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. [Paywalled, abstract only]

Female grooming and aggression "both appear to function as social incentives that effectively promote male participation in intergroup fights", a research team from Switzerland and South Africa reported.

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