Hardly anything sticks to you as tightly as your parents’ habits. Least of all is the resolution to do everything differently later than the generation before you. Years later, the inevitable insight comes: Much of one’s behavior is reminiscent of one’s own mother, for example. This is not only the case with humans, but – to an even greater extent – also spotted hyenas. As young animals, they take over their mother’s social network almost one-to-one, so they spend a lot of time with those conspecifics who are often with their mother. Biologists report that in the trade magazine Scienceafter Michigan State University researchers observed a group of hyenas for 27 years. The individual animals could be identified by their coat markings.
Spotted hyenas live in groups, so-called clans, which can include a few, but also close to 100 animals. A clan consists of several families, in which the females are in charge. In general, there is a strict matriarchy among the hyenas. The males generally have a lower rank than the females; sexually mature sons must leave the group. In the first years of their lives, the boys hardly leave their mother’s side. So it is no wonder that the social contacts of the generations overlap.
Lower-ranking animals maintain more contact with other conspecifics overall
How well the social inheritance of the network works is shown when the offspring maintain less contact with the mother or the mother has even died. Even then, the hyenas maintained close contact with those of their own species who had often been with their mother. This form of social inheritance was particularly evident in the children of high-ranking hyenas. The offspring of females lower in the rank, on the other hand, were less closely oriented towards maternal contacts. The scientists suspect that these animals may try to compensate for their low social position by establishing more contact with conspecifics overall.
In other animal species, too, the position of the parents within the group influences the social life of their offspring. But the connection is seldom as close as it is with hyenas. Especially since the socially inherited rank is not only shown in conflicts, but also determines friendly interactions between the clan members.
The latter has not yet been known, says lead author Amiyaal Ilany from Israel’s Bar Ilan University. The investigation also made it clear what far-reaching consequences the position of the female has for her offspring. “Social status is super important,” says study author Erol Akçay of the University of Pennsylvania. “If your mother is of a lower rank, the chances of survival and procreation are less.”
The fact that the phenomenon observed by Ilany and his co-authors is actually a social and not a genetic inheritance can be seen in the few cases in which a spotted hyena brings up unfamiliar children. In general, the study makes it clear how careful one has to be with attributing cross-generational phenomena exclusively to genetic inheritance, the authors warn. “Much of what we consider to be genetically determined by default could be due to environmental and social processes,” says Ilany.