Hyenas actively pass their social state on to their offspring

Written by Dr. H. P. Bustami

Sunday, 01 March 2009

Social interaction among hyenas. (Courtesy: Oliver Hoener)

They are never missing as performers in African wildlife documentation on TV. Everyone knows them and nobody actually likes them: hyenas. They live in packs led by female animals. They vie with lions for the same prey and often enough they succeed in hunting alive game like zebra, wildebeast and even antilopes. They are know as on carrion feeding carnivores, typical for African savannahs. But these fascinating animals also have one of the most complex social behaviours among mammals and are so extensively studied by ethologists (=behavioral scientists).

Alike in human societies the social state within the hyena "society" is important for each individual of the pack: Amount of food, reproduction rate and survival is extremely influenced by the social state of each hyena. Even diseases, other predators or environmental factors play a less important role than the social state. Now scientists found that the social state within hyena packs is actively passed on to their offspring by mothers.

Learrning whom to oppress

In hierarchy conflicts mothers support their own offspring against other (female) hyenas. The cub learns which members of the pack are dominated by its mother and thus by itself. When becoming grown up they defend the position in the hierachy. This new finding is contradictory to recent hypotheses saying that maybe genetical factors may play a much larger role in the social state which a hyena can achieve.
The scientists analyzed the results of observations from 20 years and used modern molecular genetical methods based on the rare occurrence of adoption among spotted hyenas in the Serengeti and the Ngorongoro-Crater in Tanzania.

Particular the youngs of high ranking mothers within a hyena pack benefit from the inherited social state - as adults they are privileged like the mothers. This behaviour to pass the social state on the offspring by actively supporting it in conflict situation is also present in other social mammals not least in humans.
The social and intelligent hyenas have more in common with us than expected. So if you watch TV next time and see hyenas on the screen maybe you think different.

Source:

- Marion L. East, Oliver P. Höner, Bettina Wachter, Kerstin Wilhelm, Terry Burke, and Heribert Hofer
Maternal effects on offspring social status in spotted hyenas
Behav. Ecol., Advance Access published on February 16, 2009; doi: doi:10.1093/beheco/arp020

- idW

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