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theadvancedapes  ·  4285 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: An age old question.

To be honest, there are no extreme examples of females being sexually dimorphic over males. However, hyenas and ring-tailed lemurs are both female dominant and they are slightly larger than their male counterparts. I think as a general rule, most evolutionary scientists would suspect female dominance to be connected with body size in most cases -- evolution just hasn't selected for this trait often. As for bonobos, they seem to be more monomorphic. I would personally say that male bonobos seem to be a little larger. However, female bonobos do not dominate male bonobos physically, they control them sexually.

As for chimps, males are certainly sexually dimorphic to females, and it shows within their hierarchy. Males have their own dominance hierarchy and females have their own dominance hierarchy, but the top ranking males are always dominant to the top ranking females. Females have clever ways to combat this, however many times they cannot avoid being coerced to mate or relinquish food in certain situations.