It is common knowledge among people that privileges are often inherited. But according to new data, hyenas also inherit resources and status from their parents, not just the genes of their ancestors.
The results were recently published in Achievements of science — and they challenge traditional evolutionary theories that suggest males always face more reproductive competition.
In the animal kingdom, males are usually considered the predominant sex. They are stronger and more competitive. But spotted hyenas buck this trend.
Scientists from the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (Leibniz-IZW) in Berlin and the Montpellier Institute for Evolutionary Sciences found that among spotted hyenas, females dominate males not because they are larger or stronger, but because they have a larger network of social alliances.
The study also found that female hyenas face more competition due to inheriting social rank from generation to generation.
Alpha females
Martha Mosna, lead author of the study and researcher from Leibniz-IZW and the Ngorongoro Hyena Project, observed during her visit to Africa that “male hyenas do not compete with each other as much.” Instead, they were found spending time following the alpha female, the highest ranking female hyena.
“The males follow them wherever the female goes,” Ms. Mosna said. “They stay close to her, spend a lot of time watching her, trying to connect with her and befriend her.”
On the other hand, the competition is tougher among women.
“This is not exactly what one would expect from the classical sex role that Darwin-Bateman predicts,” she said.
The Darwin-Bateman hypothesis suggests that reproductive inequality is higher among men. That is, between males and females, males can produce more offspring than females, and therefore they compete more with each other for access to mates. In mammals, females also invest more in each reproductive event than males—because they bear the physiological costs of pregnancy and lactation—they are more selective when it comes to mating. These predictions, formalized as the Darwin-Bateman paradigm, have been confirmed in many mammalian species.
However, among spotted hyenas, researchers found that females killed the cubs of other females, despite the fact that they all lived in a matrilineal society in which individuals were related to each other.
These and other observations confirmed the researchers’ conclusion that daughters of “elite” families can create powerful family lines over time, thereby challenging one of the classical paradigms of evolutionary biology.
Tips in Lemal
For their study, the researchers studied hyenas belonging to eight clans living in the Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania. Their work spanned 29 years of data, eight generations, and 2,743 wild spotted hyenas.
The team used fecal samples to trace paternity. These samples contained mucus rich in epithelium. “We need DNA information, which we typically get from the mucus around feces,” Dr. Mosna said. “You have to look at the males and wait until he poops. And then when he leaves, make sure it’s his poop so you can do a paternity test.”
“It’s not always easy,” she continued. “Sometimes they even defecate in the water and then it disappears, and sometimes after eating it becomes too runny – it’s not very nice to touch it with your hand. It can also be a little tricky, but fortunately our field assistants are very well trained and can handle it very well.”
For one clan, which the team named Lemala, the researchers compiled a 30-year family tree and found that almost all living members descended from a single founding female line.
This led them to explore how such extreme reproductive inequality could arise, which in turn led to the idea of social inheritance of rank: since a woman’s social position is passed on to her daughters, it can give that line an advantage that increases from generation to generation.
When Nepotism Pays Off
The youngest daughter born to an alpha female inherits her mother’s social status and also benefits from better access to food, allies, and reproductive opportunities. Over generations, these advantages accumulate, allowing a few privileged female lines to produce more offspring.
“Inheriting a privilege… means you have better access to food and nutrition. They grow faster and survive longer. They also have a better position in the social network, which is also very important for hyenas,” Ms Mosna said.
“This research teaches us that nothing is fixed. Sex roles are not fixed, such as how a man or a woman should behave; how our society should behave is not fixed by genetics. Only social processes can truly change society in a meaningful way.”
“This is an incredible paper that opens up many new possibilities and provides compelling evidence of the value of long-term field research,” said Kay E. Holekamp, a distinguished professor at Michigan State University who was not involved in it.
Besides hyenas
Researchers are now studying whether similar patterns of socially inherited reproductive inequality occur in other animal species. They said they also wanted to find out whether female hyenas invest differently in sons and daughters depending on their social rank. High-ranking women may invest more in daughters to pass on their privileged position, while lower-ranking women may favor sons so they can leave the clan and reproduce elsewhere, Ms. Mosna said.
“This research has broad implications for how we understand animal societies: social structures can transmit advantages across generations and thereby shape competition, inequality and evolutionary outcomes,” said Amiyaal Ilani of Tel Aviv University.
“It also shows why inheritance should not be viewed as purely genetic. Socially inherited rank, relationships and access to resources can have long-term consequences for the fitness and composition of future generations.”
Kavi Bharati R is a science writer from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore.
Published – September 14, 2026, 09:00 EST.
