Female gorillas can overpower males twice their size

Primate society is less patriarchal than we previously thought

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I Despite being roughly half their size, female gorillas can, and frequently do, overpower male gorillas when competing for status and resources, according to a recent study.

This discovery challenges the belief that gorilla society is strongly patriarchal – characterised by male dominance over females – and brings into question the origins of human gender dynamics.

Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, in Germany, and the University of Turku, in Finland, analysed 25 years of data gathered by observing the behaviour of four different groups of gorillas.