MALES are supposed to be the pushy ones when it comes to sex, but a study of African topi antelopes shows that females can be the harassers too. The males often have to fight off females they have already mated with so that they can pursue newer mates.
“When biologists talk about the ‘battle of the sexes’ they often tacitly assume that the battle is between persistent males who always want to mate and females who don’t,” says Jakob Bro-Jørgensen at the Zoological Society of London. But Bro-Jørgensen has now observed such behaviour in female African topi antelope in Kenya, which interfere with copulating pairs to compete for the male.…
