Bitch: "Try explaining the need to be passive to a female...

[NNadir]

... spotted hyena (Crocuta crocuta), writes zoologist and author Lucy Cooke, “and she’ll laugh in your face, after she’s bitten it off”.

The quotation comes from the May 22, 2022, Books in Brief from Nature.

The full text:

Bitch

Lucy Cooke Doubleday (2022)

“Try explaining the need to be passive” to a female spotted hyena (Crocuta crocuta), writes zoologist and author Lucy Cooke, “and she’ll laugh in your face, after she’s bitten it off”. She is dominant in rough play, scent‑marking and territorial defence. By analysing numerous animals, this sparkling attack on scientific sexism draws on many scientists — of multiple genders — to correct stereotypes of the active male versus passive female. Many such concepts were initiated by Charles Darwin, who is nevertheless Cooke’s “scientific idol”.

Sounds like a cool book.

[Bayard]

1. That's a pretty catchy scientific name

I thought females were dominant in most species. And males are there to protect and serve. For instance, in wild horse herds, the lead mare is at the front, deciding where they are going to go, where to graze and find water. The stallion (after he's chased off any contenders), brings up the rear.

[ReluctanceTango]

2. In most speciesof migrating birds

The males are the ones who go first to the migration destination, to get the nest built and ready for the female.

No need to go into how the male birds are the showy ones with the colorful plumage that they preen--but which makes them more vulnerable to predators, while the females are plainer in coloring, thus safer from predators.

[eppur_se_muova]

3. Spotted hyenas are truly exceptional in this regard, even among hyenas.

One should be a little careful about recognizing the potential complexity of such situations, and not make the mistake of simply reversing or negating previous dogma, however much it may appear to be incorrect in light of more recent knowledge. Older theories may not be so much wrong as just poorer approximations to reality than more recent ones. (Newtonian vs Einsteinian physics is of course Exhibit A here.)

While in the womb, male and female fetuses alike are exposed to extraordinarily high levels of male hormones, particularly testosterone. The hormones originate in the mother's ovaries and pass through the placenta, and they have a dramatic effect on the developing cubs. As a result of the androgen bath, both sexes end up with masculine-looking genitals, the male bearing the standard equipment, the female having an extremely enlarged clitoris that resembles a penis and fused, protuberant vaginal labia that look like a plump pair of testicles. Both sexes can and do get erections at the slightest provocation -- when sizing up a stranger, when greeting a friend. But though the two sexes look equal, they are not: the female is in charge.
***
Already their discoveries are toppling traditional ideas about testosterone and its role in shaping dominant behavior, suggesting that for many animals, including humans, other hormonal pathways may be more important in the genesis and fine-tuning of a ferocious personality.
***
The work may also lead to a more sophisticated understanding of the link between hormones and aggression. Hyena cubs, when they emerge from their testosterone-laced uterus, are the most belligerent newborns among mammals, so wired for a fight that they immediately begin attacking one another, often to the death of one. But aggression in the hyena is not simply a matter of excessive male hormones. As they age, the levels of testosterone in female hyenas decline significantly below that of the males, and yet the females remain on average far more pugnacious and slightly stouter. ...
***
The spotted hyena is very different on a number of counts. The researchers discovered that although adult females do not have unusual amounts of testosterone in their blood, they do have high concentrations of another common mammalian hormone, called androstenedione (an-dro-steen-DIE-own), which is produced by their ovaries. Endocrinologists have long dismissed this as a junk or inactive hormone, but the California researchers have found that it is an important precursor to either estrogen or testosterone, although when or how it is converted into these active hormones in most animals remains unclear.

In the hyena, the conversion occurs in the placenta. Rather than act as a shield against maternal hormones, the hyena's placenta takes the precursor androstenedione and transforms it into fiery doses of testosterone. The fetuses of both sexes end up exposed to levels of androgens far exceeding what a male fetus can generate on its own.
***
The scientists suspect that hormones other than testosterone are at work in assuring the female's dominance, possibly the precursor hormone, androstenedione, which could influence behavior by linking up with the appropriate hormone receptors in the female's brain. They believe that they are on track to understanding these other hormonal pathways, work that could overturn traditional and simplistic dogma about the centrality of testosterone in fostering aggression. And since other female mammals, particularly primates like humans, possess significant levels of androstenedione, the results could at least partly explain the relationship between biochemistry and aggression in some women.
***
more: https://www.nytimes.com/1992/09/01/science/hyenas-hormone-flow-puts-females-in-charge.html

We can learn a lot by studying exceptions -- they may even be uniquely crucial -- but caution is needed in extrapolating from exceptional to more typical behavior. Female spotted hyenas appear to be strongly masculinized, and not just due to testosterone, but also to another hormone whose role is still being investigated, suggesting that there's more to (spotted hyena, at least) sexuality than a one-dimensional spectrum running from testosterone dominance to estrogen dominance. (But we kind of knew that independently from studying humans, didn't we ?) That said, this particular evolutionary adaptation appears to be so exceptional as to be unique, so particular caution is more than warranted.

(The excerpted article is quite interesting, but be warned there's some pretty bizarre, and even gross, stuff in there. Not for the exceptionally squeamish.)