As a reality show aficionado and casual social anthropologist, I always enjoy watching the mating behaviour of humans. On this season’s series of Love Island, the young love searchers call their intended by name to ‘have a chat’, which usually signifies showing interest in them as a potential mate (fluttering of eyelashes, revealing of body parts, languorous stretching, flexing of muscles or assertive striding in males) or expressing annoyance that their intended’s mating behaviour has fallen short in some way.
Each sex hunts in packs. At regular intervals, all the boys and girls will gather to discuss progress with their respective target. When they are wooing their love object, they often take along a wingman or woman. Those who hunt alone without divulging their progress or intentions - the physically brittle but ruthless Harriet, who didn’t divulge to Nicole in their supposed ‘open’ chat that she had kissed Ciaran in bed the previous night, or who accepted the invitation of Ronnie, partnered with Pre-Raphaelite stunner Jess, to visit the ‘Hideaway’ and snog, are seen by the other members of their sex as untrustworthy and dishonest, and hence fail to make friends of the same sex - although this behaviour doesn’t put off the opposite sex, as seen by heartthrob Joey Essex taking Harriet under his wing. Although arguably, men have always been less perceptive than women at deducing sneaky, dishonest behaviour in beautiful women.
In the current series of Made In Chelsea, meanwhile, the use of wingmen and women is just as prevalent. Although the wealthy, frequently dilettante cast are from a different sociological stratum from the more down-to-earth, working class punters in Love Island, mating behaviour is still similar. Groups of boys set off to social events and chat to clusters of girls. Dancing is often involved to loosen up and shake off inhibitions. Occasionally there is another group activity, like singing, which similarly untangles knots of nerves. Having a wingman or woman makes it so much easier to have casual, friendly conversation, from which pairing may subsequently occur. Interest is expressed both socially and physiologically: homing in on the intended target, tactile behaviour, dilatation of pupils.
In Love Island, boys reveal their interest in a girl by making them coffee in the morning. In Made in Chelsea, the message may be transmitted by buying a glass of champagne, or, in the case of David, presenting his desired one, Liv, with a gold and diamond bracelet.
It’s therefore fascinating to see many of these behaviours replicated in the animal kingdom. Just as individuals call their intended by name for a chat in Love Island, elephants call each other by specific names. In the same way that Jess could not respond to Ronnie when he called Harriet for a rendezvous, an elephant will not respond to a call if it is another elephant being called. This research was published in Nature, Ecology and Evolution by Fristrup and colleagues.
Meanwhile, Dr Katy Holmes at the University of Western Australia has just published the results of a study she led that showed that dolphin males, like human ones, rely on wingmen. ‘As adults, pairs or trios of adult males will coordinate their behaviour to consort with various females’, the researchers reported. Sometimes the group expands to up to 14 members, echoing the clumping of male and female contestants on Love Island or the participants in Made in Chelsea. Stealing females from other alliances is common - replicating the recent behaviour of Vanderpump, who ‘stole’ Julia (‘Muffin’) from enemy Tristan.
‘Juvenile play involves immature versions of adult reproductive behaviours that are crucial for males to access and mate with oestrous females’, wrote Holmes and her colleagues. This is evident in the human behaviour we see in these TV programmes - there is a lot of playful behaviour and drinking and laughter before a couple decides whether they are right for each other and produces offspring, like Maeva and James in Made in Chelsea have done.
Some birds also use wingmen and form groups to look for mates. Male wire-tailed manakins form groups known as leks, and indulge in singing, dancing, and strutting in much the same way as the gangs of socialising young people in the reality shows. The strutting may not be accompanied by flicks of the hair, as in male humans, but no one who has ever watched a pursuing, horny male pigeon strut determinedly around a frankly bored and irritated female pigeon could doubt this, and the comical puffing up of the male’s feathers as it pursues its target is similar to a the way a strutting male human may swagger their shoulders to appear bigger, while the back and forth thrusting of the male pigeon’s head is not unlike the cocky neck movements of a cologne-drenched male human in hot pursuit. Usually, both female pigeons and humans hurriedly flee, but successful mating occurs on enough occasions to propagate both species.