As an animal’s ability to subordinate another through force or threat.

  In the dry, thorny forests of Madagascar, Verreaux’s sifaka lemurs leap between trees with gravity- defying ease. For these primates, there’s no question which sex is dominant. “Females beat up the males,” says anthropologist Rebecca Lewis of the University of Texas at Austin. “Females beat up the males,  

Females beat up the males.

To avoid smacks to the face and bites, males call out submissively when females approach — a chattering chi chi chi chi, which is “the equivalent of bowing down,” says Lewis. At trees laden with edible fruit, it’s ladies first:   If a male climbs up, the feasting female may aggressively lunge or glare, and he’ll often retreat to the ground. But tensions escalate during the dry season, when food is so scarce the animals lose up to 20 percent of their weight.   “They’re just really suffering during this time. One source of sustenance is the fatty baobab fruit. Its thick shell takes sifakas a half-hour to gouge open with their teeth. As a female works to free her own meal, she keeps an eye on nearby males.   When one of them breaks open the shell, she claims the fruit like a schoolyard bully, slapping him to surrender. He “might even hold onto the fruit while she’s eating … just crying the whole time because he doesn’t want to lose it,” says Lewis. Eventually he goes on to crack another. She takes that one to It’s defined by biologists.   These include spotted hyenas and two types of naked mole rat, but lemur species make up the bulk of the list. For more than 20 species of lemurs, including Verreaux’s sifaka, female rule is the rule, not the exception.   “The fact that females are socially so powerful in LEMUR societies shows us that more traditional division of sex roles is not some inevitable destiny of mammalian biology,” says Peter Kappeler, a zoologist at the University of Göttingen in Germany.   “That gives rise to all kinds of questions, why that might be the case, why lemurs are so different. A similar pattern is found in African spotted hyenas. High-ranking females keep order in clans of up to 130 members, and comprise the front lines during wars against rival hyena clans or lions. Perhaps female power, attained through social support or reproductive outcomes, led to lemur syndrome and its hyena equivalen.