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Social Facilitation, Affiliation, and Dominance in the Social Life of Spotted Hyenas a
Author(s) -
GLICKMAN STEPHEN E.,
ZABEL CYNTHIA J.,
YOERG SONJA I.,
WELDELE MARY L.,
DREA CHRISTINE M.,
FRANK LAURENCE G.
Publication year - 1997
Publication title -
annals of the new york academy of sciences
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.712
H-Index - 248
eISSN - 1749-6632
pISSN - 0077-8923
DOI - 10.1111/j.1749-6632.1997.tb51919.x
Subject(s) - asian american studies , annals , clinical neuropsychology , library science , history , psychology , sociology , anthropology , classics , psychiatry , computer science
Spotted hyenas (Crocuta crocuta) are social carnivores, living in multifemale, multimale ‘‘clans.’ ’ ‘ s 2 With female philopatry and male dispersal, separate female and male dominance hierarchies, and female matrilines that constitute the fundamental social core of the clan, the social organization of spotted hyenas approximates that of many common old world monkeys in the broad outline of their ~ociali ty.~.~ Membership in the clan enables hyenas to hunt prey as large as zebra and is essential to defense of kills against lions and of hunting territories against other groups of hyenas. Spotted hyenas also display some rather unique characteristics. Adult females and their juvenile, or subadult, offspring dominate adult immigrant males in virtually all social interactions.“ In addition, hyenas often spend their days alone at solitary dens, typically reassembling in the late afternoon and socializing at the communal den before forming smaller hunting parties. For many hyenas there is a daily transition from a solitary existence to the intense, highly differentiated social interactions of life within the clan.’ All social carnivores display a delicate balance between cooperation and competition. In spotted hyenas, competition may simply be evinced by speed-of-eating at a kill. That is, with a group of hyenas feeding at a dead wildebeest and reducing it to a small pile of horns and hooves in less than 30 minutes, the individual that can eat most rapidly will have an advantage over colleagues that eat more slowly. Overt aggression and the formation of dominance hierarchies also play a role in access to resources, and dominance rank is directly related to ultimate reproductive success? The present paper focuses on the integration of cooperation and competition, and correlated behavioral mechanisms of aggression, dominance, and affiliation, within the social life of the spotted hyena. Towards that end, we focus on three themes that have emerged from our studies of these animals: (1) the emergence of individually differentiated systems underlying cooperation and competition from a more general tendency of hyenas to do-what-other-hyenas-are-doing; (2) the role of ‘ ‘meeting