Bornean orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus) show an attentional bias toward a male secondary sexual trait.

ABSTRACT: Visual attention mechanisms help organisms prioritize evolutionarily relevant stimuli, like threats and mating opportunities. Individuals may, therefore, attend to specific facial features. In humans, it has consistently been shown that secondary sexual traits and attractive faces capture and hold attention. By contrast, evidence for such biases in nonhuman primates, especially great apes, remains scarce. To address this gap, we conducted two eye-tracking experiments with four zoo-housed Bornean orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus), a species characterized by extreme sexual dimorphism. In both experiments, we found that orangutans exhibited an attentional bias toward fully flanged males, a sexually dimorphic trait of some adult males. They not only looked longer at flanged males but were also more

SUBMITTER: Roth TS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12576873 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature