The lion is much bigger than the lioness.
In the same way, the female elephant of the African savannahs, who has no reason to be ashamed of her build with an average of three tonnes, is much smaller than the male.
But this rule, which would like males to be larger, is far from being a general rule.
This is neither true in the animal world in general nor in mammals in particular.
On the contrary.
According to new work carried out by scientists at Princeton University (United States) and published in the journal
Nature Communications,
less than half of mammal species have this characteristic.
In almost 39% of cases, both sexes have the same mass and in 16%, it is even the females who are heavier.
“
This discovery is not entirely new,”
explains Jean-Michel Gaillard, ecologist at the biometrics and evolutionary biology laboratory in Lyon.
We have long known that sexual dimorphism, the difference in size between males and females…
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