by New York (AP) – Female bonobos find strength in numbers that merging to ward off men in the wild, a new study states.
Together with chimpanzees, bonobos are among the closest relatives of humans. Scientists have been wondering for a long time why bonobos live in societies that are generally dominated by women, since men are physically larger and stronger.
Three decades of observations in the Congo – the only place in which the endangered bonobos are found in the wild – support the idea of a sisterhood in which female bonobos tie together to assert their power.
These groups of girls hunted male bonobos from trees and secured themselves and secured themselves and women who grouped more in the social manager of their community, the researchers found.
“It is very clear that you don’t want to exceed as a male bonobo,” said study author Martin Surbeck from Harvard University.
The results were published on Thursday in the Journal Communications Biology.
The combined numbers of the female bonobos seem to turn the leaf against the physical strength of a man, said Surbeck. It is one of the rare times when such a strategy made it possible for the females to reach the top in the animal kingdom. Spotted hyenas are similar in groups.
Female bonobos also combined if they had no close relationships, supported each other against the men and consolidated their social reputation. The observations show how female bonobos work together to protect themselves from male violence, said biological anthropologist Laura Lewis at the University of California in Berkeley.
The results support “the idea that people and our ancestors are likely to build and maintain coalitions for millions of years,” said Lewis, who was not involved in research, in an e -mail.
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