What Chimps Can Tell Us About The Friendzone

Whenever you mention the infamous “friendzone,” you’re bound to get views from all sides of the issue. For some Men, it’s all doom and gloom and is the source of all the injustice and angst in life. Others, some I know personally, are honestly so masterful at escaping the friendzone, I would really never argue with them about taking any other course. There are some guys out there that simply refuse to fraternize with the opposite sex with anything less than intimate goals in mind. Other guys seem to find themselves with more female friends than guy friends. Others still, are somewhere in the middle like I am, where as both a professional and a student, I find it almost impossible to not deal with a small subset of women on friendly basis; these are the ones that are business associates or others that are just fruitful connections to have. One thing I don’t want to do is divide men on an issue that is likely to never be settled, so when it comes to the age old question of “is it better to be friends first?” unfortunately I can’t give you a definitive yay or nay. What I can give you, however, is perhaps some incite from a source you may find more persuasive than any answer present-day society could give you: intersexual pan troglodyte friendships, a.k.a. “chimps in the friendzone!”

“Shut. Up. No they don’t!” a woman will emphatically respond (especially when she identifies herself as a feminist; did I mention this is a great bar conversation to have? No, seriously). Of all the sciences I had to endure in my time as an undergrad, none were quite as interesting as Evolutionary Biology and Primatology, the study of primates. Did I mention that the Primatology classes were all cross-listed as Anthropology classes? Well, that’s where this is going. Monkeys, believe it or not, came up with the friendzone long before man ever walked the Earth. I often point to primatology as the foundation of many of my arguments, because examination of primate evolutionary behavior can provide a meaningful, logical link to anthropological behavior.(1)Therefore, whenever there appears some consistency across the line in behavior, it is worth some study.

Dominance Hierarchy

Male and female chimpanzees have dominance hierarchies.(2) Males have a hierarchy based on who is the biggest, strongest, etc. from alpha to beta: for the purposes of this model, we will say there is a group of 10 males, 1 being the alpha, to 10, the omega, and the beta males falling in between. Females have a hierarchy based on who all the males want to reproduce with, along with some other factors. Logically speaking, the top male gets the top female, and likely 2,3,4, and any more of the females he might want. The top males take all the women in the group 1–9. The lower males get in where they fit in. The beta male and beta female might just end up dying alone, because even they may not want to be with each other. That leaves the 7–9 males. They don’t want to die out, but the 7–9 females are already pregnant with the more dominant males’ kids. So what do these males do? You guessed it. They create “friendships” with these females, helping them raise their kids, grooming them, bringing them food. What results of this friendship is that sometimes the female will allow the male to reproduce with her. Only sometimes. If the higher males don’t feel like hittin’ it again. That’s the friendzone in a nutshell. Human behavior dictates that anything one really wants he or she would jump on it as quickly as possible. Does anybody put a delicious cheeseburger on layaway? But that’s just what happens to these monkeys. They might be cheeseburgers, but she wants pizza. So she puts them in the refrigerator, and they sit there, just waiting. And they keep waiting, while she eats sushi, steak, porkchops, chicken nuggets, and even other cheeseburgers! Because, really, who wants a cheeseburger that’s been sitting in the fridge!

Protection Against Infanticide

Infanticide in chimp communities is a thing. A new alpha male takes over and he looks to destroy any competitor genes. There is evidence to support that male-female friendships can stall this phenomenon. (3) On the human side, obviously the new guy isn’t coming in and killing the woman’s babies just to set up shop for himself, but you get the point. The new alpha male might think twice before moving in too quickly. Think of this scenario: how many times have you gone to a club or party and found this really hot girl dancing with some dude all night in the way that can only be described as “kind-of-like-he’s-with-her, kind-of-like-he’s not?” So, you ignore the guy and take a chance with her. To your surprise, she says, “You’re like the first guy to talk to me!” And you go, “I mean, I thought you were with him.” And she says, “Oh him? He’s just my friend!” The study of socio-spatial relationship patterns in chimps provides incite on male reproductive strategy, as they are more likely to focus their mating efforts on the females they hang around with the most.(4) But alas, just like a story we humans are all too familiar with, this strategy was found unlikely to increase mating success.

Parental Care

In addition to sticking around to prevent infanticide, the male friend is willing to even take care of the female’s offspring by another male. Such behavior resulted in an increase in mating success by the lower-ranking male.(5) It may seem rare when it comes to humans, but it does occur: a guy in the friendzone developing an attachment to his best female friend’s kid. He says he’s not trying to hit it, but come on now. This next part might sound a lot like a Jerry Springer episode, but in larger communities where it is improbable that one alpha male will be able to take care of all the kids he has, the female will actually make multiple males think they are possibly the father, in order to increase the likelihood that each male will direct his protective efforts to her offspring. (6)Hey, Maury, I’ll be waiting for your call!

Food!

Did the internet ever tell you that the way to a woman’s heart was through Chipotle? Last, but certainly not least, lower-ranking males saw an increase in mating success when they shared their food with the female friend. The scenario goes as follows: the lower-ranking male is more likely to have to “bargain” with the female in order to mate. (7)So, he trades food for sex! Tell me again why going out to dinner has always been the standard go-to date for humans?

That essentially covers what and why we are as Men. Who we are really boils down to where we fall on that 1–10 scale, behavior-wise. Are you not a Man because you’re not a 1–2? There can logically only be a couple of those. Are you a lil’ bitch that should die out because your 7–10? As I said previously, I know guys that do very well for themselves in their own lane. If you’re doing alright chilling in the friendzone, that’s probably what you should be doing. Ultimately, a man is going to do what gets him the most success. If you want to be the guy who gets all the women, and you’re tired of being the dude stuck in the friendzone, then you’ve got some changing to do. You can’t be the type of guy that women would view as a friend. It is what it is…

-Jalen Williams

Footnotes:

1.Langergraber, Kevin E. et al. “Male–Female Socio-Spatial Relationships And Reproduction In Wild Chimpanzees”. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology 67.6 (2013): 861–873. Web. 27 June 2016.

2. Cummins, Denise D. “Dominance Hierarchies And The Evolution Of Human Reasoning”. Minds and Machines 6.4 (1996): 463–480.

3. Ostner, Julia et al. “Stable heterosexual associations in a promiscuous primate”. Animal Behaviour 86.3 (2013): 623–631.

4. Langergraber, (2013).

5. Ostner, (2013).

6. Id.

7. Jaeggi, Adrian V. & Van Schaik, Carel P. “The evolution of food sharing in primates”. Behavior Ecology and Sociobiology 65(2011): 2125–2140. Web 22 June 2011.