AFRICAN lionesses are true egalitarians. Unlike most cooperative animal
societies, where a female despot has more babies than her inferiors, mother
lions in a pride have equal numbers of young.
Craig Packer of the University of Minnesota in St Paul and his colleagues
reviewed the births of lion cubs between 1963 and 1999 in the Serengeti National
Park in Tanzania. They found that, overall, females in a pride tended to have
the same number of offspring鈥攊n marked contrast to other cooperative
groups, such as birds, bees and even carnivores like hyenas.
The researchers think lion mothers benefit from this synchronous breeding.
Cubs of the same age are raised in nurseries by a 鈥渕others鈥� collective鈥�. This
probably increases the chances that a cub will survive, by providing better
protection against aggressive males (Science, vol 293, p 690).
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