How hyenas 'inherit' their social status
Wednesday, February 25, 2009 - 08:57
in Biology & Nature
An international team of scientists from the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (IZW) in Berlin, Germany, and the University of Sheffield, UK, now answered the question how social status is inherited in one of the most social of all mammals, the spotted hyena. In a study published online last week in the scientific journal Behavioural Ecology, the scientists used observations during the last 20 years of rare cases of adoption among hyenas in the Serengeti and Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania in combination with the latest molecular techniques to identify genetic mothers to demonstrate that hyena mothers pass on their social status by supporting their young during social interactions with other group members...