Heribert Hofer is not only Vice-President of the GDNÄ and a mentor for the jGDNÄ, the organisation for young scientists, but also a renowned zoologist and behavioural ecologist. He spoke about his field research on spotted hyenas in the Serengeti during the biology session at the Bremen Congress Centre..

Professor Hofer, your talk focused on female assertiveness in spotted hyenas. How does this trait manifest itself?
When females win conflicts with males not just occasionally, but virtually always, we speak of female dominance. And this is very clearly evident in spotted hyenas, as we know from our forty years of research in the Serengeti. 

Serengeti.To what extent can insights about spotted hyenas be applied to us humans?
Like spotted hyenas, humans are highly social creatures. One difference is that, in human societies, both parents care for their offspring, whereas in spotted hyena clans, it is only the females who do so. Zoologists would describe human societies as predominantly patriarchal in organisation, whereas hyena clans are clearly matriarchal. Research into hyenas is important for determining whether male dominance is part of the blueprint for mammals or not.

© MIKA-fotografie | Berlin

Young women at the 2026 GDNÄ conference in Bremen.

The subordination of women in patriarchal societies is often justified on the grounds of a lack of physical strength. Are female hyenas stronger than males?
No, on average both sexes are similarly strong. Female dominance among them has little to do with physical strength. We regularly observe immature females dominating older, larger males. The secret behind these young females is quite simply their mothers and aunts: they sit nearby and keep the situation under control. Female partners in a hyena pack compensate for physical disadvantages – an observation that invites comparison with humans. 

Another frequently cited reason for female inferiority is a lack of aggression hormones such as testosterone. Do your findings from the Serengeti support this hypothesis?
Our hormone measurements show roughly the same concentration ratio in humans and hyenas. In male hyenas, the testosterone concentration is about ten times higher than in their female counterparts. And yet, dominance behaviour varies extremely widely. So it cannot be down to hormonal status. 

Could it perhaps be linked to genes, as some claim?
No evidence of this can be found in hyenas. 

If the usual explanations don’t hold water, what then explains female superiority among hyenas?
On the one hand, there is female solidarity: two females together will always win a confrontation with a male. On the other hand, there is the constellation – rare amongst mammals – whereby males are unable to exert any coercion during sexual intercourse. They only get their chance if they have previously established a friendly relationship with the female, and they have to work on this for weeks on end. As zoologists, we describe this as sexual selection for social competence, and this is unusual amongst mammals. 

What lessons can we humans learn from this?
The usual biologically based arguments for female inferiority do not hold true. Where it does occur, such inferiority is instead culturally determined. Biology does not place any constraints on women when it comes to assertiveness.