Female Animals That Are Bigger Than Males
A new study looks at why sexual dimorphism the non sexual size and shape.
Female animals that are bigger than males. Topi antelope females are only fertile one day per year and during that 24 hour period they essentially hound the male antelopes to the point of exhaustion. It is rare that the females in the species have a more ravenous sexual appetite than the males but that is exactly the case when it comes to the topi antelopes. Great bustards otis tarda hold the record for birds with a weight ratio close to three.
In some of these species females are more than 10 times longer and weigh 100 to 500 000 times more than males. In species where prey is easy to catch such as eagles mammal eating buteo hawks and old world vultures females are marginally larger than the males. A provisional list of the mammalian cases is provided.
Conversely the females of species who hunt more elusive fare may dwarf the males. Think about the queen bee or queen ant which are much larger than the tiny males. These size differences seem huge but they are trivial when compared to the differences found in species where females are the larger sex.
They are physically larger than males and in command during conflicts with predators or other clans. In most animals females are larger than males but in most mammals males are larger than females. The phenomenon is not correlated with an unusually large degree of male parental investment polyandry greater aggressiveness in females than in males greater development of weapons in females female dominance or matriarchy.
The female ranges in size from 215 to 230cm long and is perfectly adapted to the dense forests and smaller prey in her native habitat. A new analysis published in mammal review examines the potential drivers of these differences. It s the adult females.
Elsewhere on the african savannah female spotted hyenas dominate clans. Females are usually larger than males. For insects and spiders as with most non human animals the majority of females outsize their male counterparts.