Carole Hooven, Ph.D.

We still don't completely understand why males take all this valuable stuff and keep it outside of their body.

Yeah.

I wrote about this in my book and I researched it pretty thoroughly and came up with no answer because elephants and whales and, but I think elephants, there's a one other vole or something that has their testes inside, but all other mammals it's outside.

And yes, there certainly is temperature regulation, but then why don't we have the system, however it is that the elephants can get away with it.

So it's some genetic constraint.

So the chimps did this.

Yeah.

There is sometimes a little breast play, I guess, in the teenagers, but nothing like what boys do, what men do.

Give me your hypothesis about why this happens.

That's the point.

So why would they do that?

So these are kids who are good friends usually, right?

Yes.

And only a good friend could do it.

Yes.

So that's the point, I think.

Male intimacy involves insults.

The harsher the insult somehow, the more intimate, unless it's rejected, like you just described with the flick.

So chimps, and this was amazing to see because I didn't know about it.

When they're in a high stress or conflict situation or there has been a conflict, the subordinate will cup the balls of the dominant one.