EU Date - European Dating : The roots of the 'Romantic dinner’ tradition

A new study may throw light on the deep roots of the 'Romantic dinner’ tradition as part of the mating rituals of humans. It may even suggest that this tradition dates back to prehistoric times.

Scientists from Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany observed chimpanzees and have found out that male chimps that are willing to share their meet mate twice as often as their more selfish counterparts.

The scientific team monitored the animals as they hunted and counted the number of times they copulated. By sharing, the males increased the number of times they mated, and the females increased their intake of calories. What's amazing is that if a male shared with a particular female, he doubled the number of times he copulated with her, which was likely to increase the chances of fertilising that female.

Also interesting to note is that this was generally a long-term exchange, so males continued to share their catch with females when they were not fertile, copulating with them when they were.

So, basically male chimpanzees exchanged food for sex. Obviously the logic of the male chimps is not far from that of humans arranging romantic candle light dinner.