For most mammals, it\u2019s the males who are dominant. They\u2019ll compete fiercely with each other and a select few of the\u00a0top males\u00a0father most of the children. Females usually share motherhood more equally.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Spotted hyenas defy this rule. It\u2019s the females who are at the top of society as they\u00a0compete\u00a0with each other and build huge dynasties.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Scientists had previously only observed female dominance in species where the males do all the childcare, like with sea horses, or where the alpha female prevents the other females from mating, like with meerkats.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But a new study by the Ngorongoro Hyena Project at the Leibniz-IZW and the ISEM has identified a third way. When social privilege is handed down from mothers to daughters, female power compounds over time, making them the animal kingdom\u2019s ultimate nepo babies.<\/p>\n
Hyenas, much like baboons or macaques, live in highly social groups known as \u2018clans\u2019 that can grow up to 90 members. Spotted hyena clans are matriarchal. The females grow larger than males and display their dominance through higher aggression.\u00a0<\/p>\n
As\u00a0the females usually retain their maternal rank, alpha females benefit from these advantages in the long term. They begin reproducing earlier, have shorter intervals between births and overall have a higher life expectancy than lower-ranking females. <\/p>\n
A female hyena automatically passes down her social status to her children. Higher-ranking cubs get priority access to food, grow faster, live longer and breed more.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Females stay in their home clan and retain their social status forever, whereas the males\u00a0usually leave home to find a mate in a new clan. This is when they drop to the bottom of the ladder and lose all their nepo baby privileges.
For the first time, scientists have finally explained why female hyenas are the more competitive sex.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A 29-year study tracking 2,700 hyenas across eight generations in Tanzania showed that reproductive inequality among females increased with every generation. Privileged lineages didn’t just remain successful \u2013 they grew ever larger.<\/p>\n
If you look at just one year, males seem to have more variation in breeding, just like other mammals. It\u2019s only when you track the grandchildren and great-grandchildren, high-ranking female lines take over.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In one generation, around 10% of a clan\u2019s offspring are directly descended from alpha females. By the nextgeneration, as many as 20% are descended from an alpha grandmother. After six generations, virtually every single hyena can be traced back to the original matriarchs.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This results in extreme female reproductive inequality. When a small handful of privileged bloodlines monopolise the entire clan, lower-ranking female lines die out.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you only measure offspring, you might conclude that there is little inequality among females and therefore weaker competition among them, and that males are the more competitive sex\u201d, says the study’s lead author, Marta Mosna from the Leibniz-IZW.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cHowever, if you measure across generations, you see the opposite \u2013 finally explaining why females are the more competitive sex among hyenas!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For most mammals, it\u2019s the males who are dominant. They\u2019ll compete fiercely with each other and a select…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":788943,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[74],"class_list":["post-788942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/788942","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=788942"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/788942\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/788943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=788942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=788942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=788942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}