Despite being roughly half the size of their male counterparts, female gorillas can, and frequently do, dominate males in contests over status and resources, a recent study has revealed.
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This discovery calls into question the long-held view of gorilla society as strictly patriarchal – dominated by males – and offers fresh insights into the evolution of human gender dynamics.
Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany and the University of Turku in Finland analysed 25 years of behavioural data from four gorilla groups in the wild. Wild mountain gorillas have traditionally been seen as the epitome of male-dominated hierarchies among primates, largely due to the pronounced size difference between males and females – the most extreme among great apes.
While gorilla society is indeed hierarchical, with a single alpha male at the top and others competing for status beneath him, the new study shows that hierarchies are far more gender-balanced than previously thought.
“Female gorillas often outrank males,” lead author Dr Nikos Smit told BBC Science Focus. “This highlights that power in gorilla groups is not solely determined by size and strength.”
In groups with multiple males, 88 per cent of females ranked above at least one adult male, particularly when the males were very young or old. Furthermore, females won more than a quarter of conflicts with non-alpha males, despite their smaller size.
Senior author Dr Martha Robbins, director of the Bwindi mountain gorilla research project, explained that these victories are often linked to the female’s relationship with the alpha male. “Non-alpha males are aware that challenging high-ranking females could provoke the alpha male,” she said. “It’s safer for them to submit if they wish to remain in the group.”
The researchers also discovered that the main prize in these conflicts was access to food, contradicting previous assumptions that males primarily competed over mates while females only fought each other for resources.
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The study’s findings carry implications for our understanding of human gender structures. The researchers concluded that male dominance in human societies is not an inevitable product of evolution, but rather shaped by humans’ flexible social and mating systems. Observations of bonobos, close relatives of humans, support this view: although males are larger, females often assert dominance over them, demonstrating that patriarchy is not a fixed inheritance from our primate ancestors.
