Female Animal Leaders

  Influence over the entire group. Dominant animals can be leaders, capable of directing collective action. Or they may just be lone bullies at the baobab tree. For spotted hyenas and two lemur species, dominance certainly plays a role. But the other five species took different pathways to leadership.   Female elephants and killer whales can live into their 80s in matrilineal societies, comprising up to four generations of mothers and offspring. With the most accumulated wisdom about local resources and dangers, female elders lead group movement and food pursuits. “It makes so much incredible sense,” says Smith. “These long-lived females with great knowledge … of course they should be the leaders.” Killer whales, or orcas, are also one of the few species in which females live decades past menopause. Orca communities especially follow these grandmothers (or great-grandmothers) during hard times, like when salmon prey are scarce, according to a 2015 study in Current Biology.   Meanwhile, female lions and bonobos derive strength from numbers. In both species, allied females fend off bigger, stronger males. Kinship unites the lionesses, but bonobos form coalitions of nonrelatives, which groom and fondle each other. Females of this chimpanzee species, “through their cooperative social alliances, are in a way civically larger and more influential than one male,” Smith explains.   Female Animals Leaders Killer Whales Orca Only one of the species lives in the oceans. Female orcas live into their 90s and remain in their birth area throughout their lives, so the pod matriarch has valuable knowledge of the location of salmon filled waters. You could call it a culture shock. Many researchers accept that cultural experiences have helped shape human evolution – and evidence has now emerged that the same may be true of killer whales.   Human genomes have evolved in response to our cultural behaviours: a classic example is the way that some human populations gained genes for lactose tolerance following the onset of dairy farming. But whether genomes and culture co-evolve in other animal species has been unclear.   Andrew Foote at the University of Bern, Switzerland, and his colleagues suspected that killer whales might follow a similar pattern to humans. Orcas, or killer whales , live in a matriarchal society and offspring stay with their mothers for life even after having offspring of their own.   A pod of killer whales will be made up of multiple family units, known as matrilines, which tend to travel gether. Killer whales are very protective of their young, who are cared for not only by their mother but also by other adolescent females in the pod.