4-finger civet likes 1-night relationship

Four-finger civet, famous for its cooperative behavior, in which each member has a certain position. But the researchers found a sign of disobedience in the members of the subordinates.

These lowly guys are often struggling to approach the beauty due to their superior control. Now research has found that they still have tricks to spread their genome. It is they sneaking through the night with other girls in the group.

"One of the reasons people care about this community is the clear collaboration among team members - the lower-level males are not created but they will help look after the young ones," said the researcher. Andrew Young at Cambridge University in England said. "But natural selection gives priority to those who can transmit as much of their genome as possible, so it seems contradictory when these males are helping others."

Young and colleagues observed 15 Suricata suricatta four civet groups in the Kalahari desert, Africa. Within 5 years, researchers conducted genetic tests to determine the paternity of newly born young children.

Suricata suricatta quadruple (Photo: dinosoria.com)

The team observed that subordinate males regularly visit other territories at the time of their offspring at the height of reproduction . Earlier, it was thought that males seeking new territory were to climb the throne. However, the genetic test showed that these males actually sneaked into " out-of-town " girls and they succeeded.

These interactions make up 70% of the offspring of subordinate males, helping them to multiply without being completely separate from the main family.

"The next step we need to understand is why the females agreed to have sex with these subordinates - the males themselves could not easily break into the new group and join the females. "We have to leave the group and also sneakily go to see him. So we need to know what benefits the girls will get from this," Young said.

MT