Matriarchy and patriarchy: which is more beneficial for survival in nature. Which animals have matriarchy in their lifestyle? Matriarchy in nature
You must have heard of the tribe. Amazons in which reigned matriarchy? African elephants similar in their habits to them.
Elephants take care of their children on their own for 10-15 years, with the help of older daughters. Even if they have cubs, they will not stop obeying their mothers.
African elephants live long, so for them usually what herd run by the grandmother-elephant.
They have a rule - expel fifteen year old sons. They are slightly offended, and then hit with tusks painfully enough for the baby elephant to leave.
When male grows up and matures, he can come to visit his native herd. You can’t argue much with a large African male, so he protects his relatives and lives there as long as he needs. But! This elephant will never be at the head.
Among the elephants are found albinos however, this is a rarity. Today in Thailand, 11 pink elephants are owned by the king, as in ancient times, they never work. Pets of the current ruler of Thailand live near his palace in Bangkok, and citizens of the state can only see them at ceremonial events.
We offer to look at the representatives of the elephant family in our video.
MOSCOW, January 31 - RIA Novosti. IN modern society gender differences have lost their former significance. Women can pursue careers and politics, men can devote themselves to family and children. Animals don't. Gender roles in elephants, wolves, horses are clearly distributed.
False matriarchy
In pack animals, the leader is usually a male, which is logical. Usually males are larger and more massive: this gives an advantage in the struggle for survival, as well as in the fight for leadership. But for some species, evolution has made an exception.
A man with a weapon in his hands seems larger, scientists sayA firearm or edged weapon in the hands of a man makes him taller and larger in the eyes of outside observers, while the "increase" depends on how dangerous weapon he holds up compared to the people around him, American anthropologists say.Spotted hyenas live in clans with a strict hierarchy, and females rule there. Males occupy the lowest position, and in the middle of the social ladder is the young of the female. A hyena inherits its status from its mother - it is possible to raise it, but rather difficult. Males treat females with respect, waiting for months or even years for their favor. However, hyenas prefer to mate with representatives of other clans, thus avoiding inbreeding. Males eat last, after the female leader and the rest of the females are satisfied.
Hyena females larger than males, and due to the high level of testosterone, they sometimes grow false male genitals. Moreover, it is so impressive in size that it is not easy to distinguish a female from a male, especially at a distance. Interestingly, the cubs of spotted hyenas are born sighted and with teeth. Almost immediately, young females begin to fight each other without touching the brothers. Not surprisingly, among females, the fittest survive.
© AP Photo / Karel Prinsloo
© AP Photo / Karel Prinsloo
It should be noted that in spotted hyenas, females are physically closer to males - they are aggressive, large and strong. Evolution performed a very intricate pirouette, creating matriarchy according to the laws of patriarchy, that is, according to the laws of the strongest, not the smartest.
Experienced Leader
In the struggle for survival, animals rely not only on aggressiveness and physical strength, but also on the ability to build social hierarchy on knowledge and experience. Due to constant fights with rivals, the body of males wears out faster, they rarely live to a respectable age. Therefore, where the accumulated information is more important than strength, older females are recognized as leaders.
Famous supporters of true matriarchy are elephants. The most adult female is neutral towards her relatives, no one is afraid of her and does not try to appease her. But the herd watches her reaction and imitates her. If it shows concern, say by hearing the roar of a lion, the herd takes up defensive positions. The elephant is imperturbable - and the whole herd is calm.
Males that have reached puberty live in splendid isolation or unite in small groups - after all, elephants are social animals, they are more fun together. In killer whales and rats, the older female also leads the flock, but no one drives out the males. They are much easier to hunt with.
The victory of the patriarchy
However, matriarchy in nature is still an exception. Among representatives of the families of wolves, ungulates, in lion prides, among primates, males are in charge. It turns out that patriarchy is generally more profitable than matriarchy?
The fact is that females are more likely to take care of the cubs, even to the detriment of their own health. This contributes high level typically female hormones, in particular oxytocin and prolactin. Males have much less of these hormones, and their parental instincts are practically silent. Nature is cruel - sometimes you have to sacrifice the life of a cub to save your own. After all, you can give birth to new offspring, but a defenseless baby without an adult will still not survive - why show unnecessary heroism?
Suppose, in a wild herd, one foal injured its leg and limped. He can't move fast enough. But the herd does not stand in one place - it needs food. It is impossible to sacrifice general safety for the sake of one sick foal, and the leader-stallion leads the herd further, leaving the sick one. The mare, by virtue of maternal instinct, will protect the foal to the last, forgetting about the herd and endangering dozens of individuals.
In nature, the role of the leader most often goes to the male simply because he does not need to bear offspring, becoming more vulnerable during pregnancy, and then take care of the cubs. How, being demolition, to protect their power, fighting with rivals? In addition, the leader must devote himself to the whole pack, and not pay attention to one small and weak creature.
Construction of Göbekli Tepe. Reconstruction.
Matriarchy and patriarchy, two forms of social organization. Matriarchy is ancient. Today, it has been preserved among individual archaic tribes. The patriarchal society, as experts say, has replaced it, so that the phenomena of life of both very often oppose (oppose) each other. In the literature, speaking about the features of matriarchy or patriarchy, they cite such signs as: the role of women and men in the family, determining the relationship of children, the circle of their activities.
These descriptions are voluminous, but always leave a feeling of the secondary properties of the given properties, their subordination to others - the main ones. There is a feeling of vagueness: it is difficult to imagine a picture of life in each case, what are essential features each, what is their main difference. At the same time, they see the transition from antiquity to modernity in the change of these forms. I have tried to clarify this misunderstanding for myself by characterizing the most important features inherent in the societies of both forms, based on historical data and common sense.
Matriarchy and patriarchy are two forms of the organization of society, which determine different relations for each case between members of society, to the outside world, to otherworldly forces for a person.
Matriarchy is characterized by the worship of the mother and the earth with the ability to give birth that unites them. This deified ability is given by nature. Of which the person feels himself to be a part. From her elements he finds deities, the most important of which is embodied in the image of mother earth. Earth in Greek is “chthon”, respectively, the deities of this period are chthonic and are the oldest for civilization.
All his life a person connects with them, builds himself on them. Nature gives life and takes it away. She is kind and stern. These traits are merged in her. Just like in a mother: she loves, but she is strict. This is life in harmony with nature, i.е. acceptance of all manifestations without attempting to tame them. Nature is sacred, therefore it should not be transformed, but preserved. All the creativity of society and individuals is aimed at adjusting to natural conditions. The consciousness of the people of this era, as it were, is mundane.
Accordingly, a religious ritual is an expression of love for nature and aims to get closer to it, to merge. It is obvious that in this case natural properties of a person must be fully involved, finding its extreme manifestation in orgies.
Giving nature a sacred character sets the appropriate patterns of behavior: the way of life sets the reproduction in breadth (in numbers and territory), thus repeating the burly mother, as well as the reproduction of the existing social form, with gradual filling of space.
Rice. 1. Sculpture from the HöleFels cave (35-40 thousand years)
Thus, the settlement of Chatal-guyuk, according to the reconstruction, was ~ in 6000 BC. a cluster of simple houses of the same type, each of which is able to build 1 family.
Rice. 2. The settlement of Chatal-Guyuk. Reconstruction.
In such a society, the co-organization of large collectives is not required. Accordingly, there is no need for a hierarchy. All are equal, all children of the same mother.
The situation is different under patriarchy. Its rooting is traditionally associated with the "invasion" of the Indo-European tribes into the territory modern Europe and Asia, referring them somewhere to the 5th thousandth year BC. They brought with them new gods, who either supplanted the old ones or absorbed them in a subordinate position. How has society changed?
It seems to me that the main change occurred in the object of religious worship, which (which) became transcendental, i.e. lost touch with nature. In response, man received a creative impulse in relation to the world: to nature and society. The ability to rearrange them as you wish: to show the will to intervene and understand why.
The “invasion” itself, although it lasted for centuries, presupposes a certain purposefulness of the masses, which is opposed to the spontaneity of adjusting to natural conditions. “Settlement” in the heads of this purposefulness, in my opinion, should have been accompanied by the fact that people, as it were, turned their gaze from the earth towards the sky.
Those. distinguishing feature patriarchy willfulness over nature and society. Accordingly, the natural features of a person will not be cherished here, and a certain sublime feeling of belonging to the gods comes to the fore.
I see the personification of the patriarchal will in this image.
Rice. 3. The city of Uruk at the end of 3 thousand BC Reconstruction.
The city is very similar to the above Chatal-Guyuk, except for the palace. This cannot be built by the forces of a matriarchal community. It needs organization large mass people, divided by hierarchy, and in a strong-willed way embodying the idea of the "father".
In families dominated by a female, order most often reigns. True, it is worth noting that this is also a dictatorship. I've always been amazed by men who literally obeyed their wives, but such behavior in animals is not at all surprising ...
IN wild nature matriarchy is quite common: from insects, such as bees, to the largest land mammals- elephants. I am familiar with insects only from the experience of the bitten one, and macro photography is not at all mine, so I don’t know anything about them. And since I'm a wildlife photographer, my observations are mainly related to large mammals, mainly African predators. I have been photographing wild cats and their distant relatives- hyenas. I want to tell you that the longer I watch the life of these felines, the more I am amazed and surprised.
1. Yes, of course, it is purely aesthetically pleasing to look at the pride of lions, but believe me, the organization of the family life of hyenas is much more interesting.
2. The dominant female hyena controls absolutely all processes in the clan. In addition to bearing and raising children, she determines the target for hunting and is the coordinator during the attack. She determines the food queue, keeps order and can literally punish someone who violates it, although this happens extremely rarely.
3. Maintain such a stable social system hyenas are helped by a very developed and diverse language of communication. Hyenas communicate with each other not only with sounds that are extremely unpleasant for the human ear and resemble a mixture of howling, roaring and laughter, but also with smells. The smell of a hyena is very pungent and each individual is unique. Depending on the reproductive cycle, the smell changes and serves as an important regulator of intra-clan relations. The smell of the dominant female causes humility not only among males, but also among other females who are at the lowest level in the hierarchy.
When photographing hyenas, I have repeatedly noticed that males often show their aroused genitals to the female. And often he literally shakes his dignity in front of the female's muzzle.
4. I thought that he was trying to flirt, showing her his desire to mate. Males are known to get excited by the smell of a flowing female, but I once noticed a similar behavior of a male in the presence of a female who had just given birth. There could be no talk of any estrus at that moment, therefore, the male should not have shown interest in it. I was surprised by this, and I began to study the issue.
As it turned out, by such behavior the male shows his humility and complete submission! The female at this moment begins to growl and bare her teeth. We must pay tribute to the courage of the male, because to shake his dignity in front of such strong jaws- it's a no-brainer! For reference, the jaws of a hyena create a pressure of 70 kg / cm2.
5. In the clans of hyenas, males are so lowly ranked that even cubs are one step higher. There are many males in the flock, but some are expelled over time. The decision to exile is also made by the dominant female. Despite being tough on males in general, female hyenas are often lenient with their fathers.
6. Who decides which female is superior? Most often, the daughters of the dominant female fight for the “throne”. The struggle for power begins in childhood - young females often engage in deadly battles.
7. In this photo, the dominant female, the raised tail is a demonstration of her high position in the pack.
8. And in general, they are not as vile as many people think. Often funny and even cute:
12. In general, hyenas have a real pronounced matriarchy. Well, what do you want from a lady who is not only bigger and stronger than her companion, but also has her own pseudo-penis?! Yes Yes exactly! First scientific descriptions hyenas were noted to be prone to homosexual contact. However, scientists later found that in females, the clitoris can greatly increase, reaching 15 centimeters, and at such moments the female can be mistaken for a male.
13. Here they are, hyenas.
Which animals have matriarchy in their lifestyle?
Matriarchy is a form of social organization in which family power belongs to women.MANY EXAMPLES: a few of them
BISON
Bison live for a long time: females - up to thirty years old, males - a little less. Such longevity is facilitated by a healthy "moral climate" in a strictly balanced family. A separate herd consists of an adult, battered bull, four or five queens and a herd of young calves. The head of the family rarely participates in "women's squabbles". In the uterine group, everything is run by a highly experienced, wise and domineering bison-matriarch. According to her behavior, "facial expressions and gestures," the rest of the females correct their own actions and intentions.
http://vecherka.ru/Jivojugolok/1634
HYENA
Found throughout almost all of Africa spotted hyenas are more distant relatives of cats than dogs. Hyenas live, united in clans, and females lead the clan. Matriarchy reigning among hyenas is an extremely rare phenomenon for predators.
Hyenas live in clans led by a female (matriarchy).
Males are not allowed to approach children: fathers are not averse to eating their heirs.
http://karakg.net/hu/?per=tekebaaev&id=3...
ELEPHANT
Elephants have a life expectancy of 60 to 70 years. Some features of elephants are very similar to humans, namely, they remember previous experiences and are able to use this knowledge. Another similarity is that their stages of development correspond to the stages of human development. Over the course of a lifetime, they go from the stage of rebellious childhood, curious adolescence to adulthood when the elephant turns into a proud intellectual and majestic animal. The elephant family is matriarchy. A large, strong female worries and protects her family. Adult elephants usually travel alone or in small groups.
http://www.zambezi.ru/index.php?id=70
killer whales
Flock - united family union in which the whole life of an animal passes from birth to death. Males live for about 50 years, females are almost twice as long up to 70-80 years. Matriarchy reigns in flocks of killer whales. From large mammals only elephants adhere to such a social structure. But unlike elephants, male killer whales remain close to their mother all their lives.
http://www.vokrugsveta.ru/publishing/vs/...
CHIMPANS BONOBO(there are many contradictions)
At the head of the community of bonobos, the closest relatives of man, is the female. The male who dares to disobey her is simply expelled from the herd. Interestingly, all or almost all aggressive disputes in the herd of bonobos are replaced by ... elements of mating behavior - sex games for them is a way to avoid conflict. For example, before starting to eat, two female bonobos necessarily entered into genital contact with each other. If there is a misunderstanding between two male or two female bonobos, they rub their genitals or caress each other with their hands and mouth. Jealousy because of the female of one male bonobo to another ends in them with elements of mating behavior towards each other. Bonobos are generally very "sexy": between all members of the community (with the exception of close relatives) and in any combination, including homosexuals, there is a high frequency of sexual contacts - however, usually very short-term and more reminiscent of game demonstrations.
http://zapiski-rep.sitecity.ru/ltext_111...
RAT
The rat community is organized in a very unusual way. They have matriarchy. The flock is led by the female, who continues the race. After she dies, the largest rat takes her place.
http://www.myslo.ru/gazeta/681/animals/3...
There are many more examples of matriarchy in the animal world - these are deer, and chinchilla, etc.