https://www.hbes.com/the-surprising-roo ... -behavior/
Some quotes:
By following 16 wild infants longitudinally in Brazil, our team provided a rare window into the development of sexual behavior under natural conditions. Our findings flip the traditional view that young primates (including humans) engage in sexual behavior merely to practice for adult reproduction, providing strong evidence for the growing consensus among researchers that, across primate species, sexual interactions help animals navigate their social worlds long before they can reproduce.
The biggest surprise was just how early these behaviors begin. Both male and female infants exhibited socio-sexual behaviors (i.e., behavior sexual in form but serve but serve social functions), such as mounting, genital inspection, and courtship gestures, within their first month of life. This remarkably early onset parallels observations in humans and shows that sexual behavior doesn’t simply lie dormant until puberty. Instead of appearing suddenly at sexual maturity, it seems to be part of the behavioral repertoire from the very beginning, at least in its early-developing form.
Infant males acted as sexual “extroverts,” engaging with a wide range of partners. Most notably, their most frequent partners were adult males, making same-sex interactions very common among them. Infant females, on the other hand, had much narrower preferences, mostly interacting sexually with other infants of both sexes.
For males, these interactions might help establish social bonds, navigate dominance hierarchies with older males, or regulate arousal in complex social settings. For females, these behaviors, at this stage, seem more embedded in general peer play and social exploration.
The article also explains that the adult monkeys who have sexual contact with infant infant monkeys were tortured and locked in cages for 40 years by the other monkeys, and then, they convinced the baby monkeys that they should feel traumatized for life and suffer as much as possible.Early sexual behavior seems relevant for building and maintaining social bonds, and canalizing arousal, rather than just preparing individuals for reproduction. Our findings also point to a broader issue: studying infant sexuality remains a highly sensitive and often avoided topic, especially in humans. This is where research on non-human primates becomes so valuable, giving us a comparative window to investigate these processes rigorously and without cultural constraints.
Just kidding. There couldn't possibly be an animal so stupid and so eager to cause suffering where there was none, could there?
