Are kubo hunters 'show offs'?

Abstract

The 'show off' hypothesis proposed by K. Hawkes, and tested using data on Ache foragers, makes important connections between food resource choice, reproductive strategies, and food sharing by human foragers. We test predictions derived from that hypothesis concerning contexts of meat acquisition, association between individuals, mobility, and reproductive success among Kubo hunter-horticulturalists of the interior lowlands of Papua New Guinea. Application of the hypothesis to both the Kubo and Ache cases is questioned. Differences between Kubo males in means and variances of returns from hunting arise as a consequence of differential target specialization; they do not map onto variation in r..