Apr 24, 2025 11:04 PM
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1080557
INTRO: Biologically speaking, female and male bonobos have a weird relationship.
First, there’s the sex. It’s the females who decide when and with whom they mate. They easily parry unwanted sexual advances—and the males know better than to force the issue. Second, there’s the food. It’s the females who usually control high-value, sharable resources—a fresh kill, say. They feed while sitting on the ground, unthreatened, while males hover in tree branches waiting for their turn.
This freedom enjoyed by females might sound normal by our standards, but according to Martin Surbeck from Harvard University, it’s “totally bizarre for an animal like a bonobo.” Bonobo males are larger and stronger than females, which gives them the physical upper hand to attack, force matings, and monopolize food.
Like almost all other social mammals with larger males, bonobo societies should be dominated by males. And yet, bonobo females famously maintain a high social status compared to their larger male counterparts. Until now, though, nobody knew how this paradoxical dynamic was possible at all.
“There were competing ideas for how,” says MPI-AB’s Barbara Fruth who has led the LuiKotale bonobo research station for 30 years, “none of which had ever been tested in wild bonobos living in the jungles in which they evolved.”
Female solidarity as a tool for power
Now, a study by Surbeck and Fruth has delivered the first empirical evidence from wild bonobos explaining the rare phenomenon: females maintain power by forming alliances with other females.
The study found that females outranked males when they formed gangs, which the authors named “coalitions.” In the vast majority of coalitions—85% of those observed—females collectively targeted males, forcing them into submission and shaping the group’s dominance hierarchy.
“To our knowledge, this is the first evidence that female solidarity can invert the male-biased power structure that is typical of many mammal societies,” says Surbeck, the study’s first author. “It’s exciting to find that females can actively elevate their social status by supporting each other.” (MORE - details, no ads)
INTRO: Biologically speaking, female and male bonobos have a weird relationship.
First, there’s the sex. It’s the females who decide when and with whom they mate. They easily parry unwanted sexual advances—and the males know better than to force the issue. Second, there’s the food. It’s the females who usually control high-value, sharable resources—a fresh kill, say. They feed while sitting on the ground, unthreatened, while males hover in tree branches waiting for their turn.
This freedom enjoyed by females might sound normal by our standards, but according to Martin Surbeck from Harvard University, it’s “totally bizarre for an animal like a bonobo.” Bonobo males are larger and stronger than females, which gives them the physical upper hand to attack, force matings, and monopolize food.
Like almost all other social mammals with larger males, bonobo societies should be dominated by males. And yet, bonobo females famously maintain a high social status compared to their larger male counterparts. Until now, though, nobody knew how this paradoxical dynamic was possible at all.
“There were competing ideas for how,” says MPI-AB’s Barbara Fruth who has led the LuiKotale bonobo research station for 30 years, “none of which had ever been tested in wild bonobos living in the jungles in which they evolved.”
Female solidarity as a tool for power
Now, a study by Surbeck and Fruth has delivered the first empirical evidence from wild bonobos explaining the rare phenomenon: females maintain power by forming alliances with other females.
The study found that females outranked males when they formed gangs, which the authors named “coalitions.” In the vast majority of coalitions—85% of those observed—females collectively targeted males, forcing them into submission and shaping the group’s dominance hierarchy.
“To our knowledge, this is the first evidence that female solidarity can invert the male-biased power structure that is typical of many mammal societies,” says Surbeck, the study’s first author. “It’s exciting to find that females can actively elevate their social status by supporting each other.” (MORE - details, no ads)