After studying the Sifakas physical traits, I decided to turn my attention to its social characteristics. It is indeed a very social creature. It interacts with other “troops” as it’s called. The males are also very competitive for mates, but submissive to females when it comes to food and shelter. Their young have a rather long maturation period compared to other animals, so they rely on their mothers to nurture them until the can reach around full size around a year old. The Sifakas are a social matriarchy. They generally live in groups of 2 to 10 lemurs and can be territorial, especially with food and shelter. Females will show their dominance over the males in the group without hesitation. They will bite and smack males if they try to
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This is highlighting how strong of a matriarchy the Sifaka holds. A study performed by Ramanamisata et al. in 2014 showed that the Sifaka are very altruistic towards one another in a way that during a 273-hour study, …show more content…
Because of this, males must compete for the females during the mating season, which is only a month or two long. A 2007 study by Kappeler and Schäffler found that infanticide by roaming males was a common reproductive strategy to take over groups and find mates. Each group, although female predominant, had a male that was dominant as well. He could be identified with a large chest gland and elevated testosterone levels compared to the other males in the group during mating season. The polyandrous mating system of the Sifaka can be advantageous for the female because it helps to decreases the chance of infanticide, as confused adult males cannot determine paternity. However, the study found that the dominant male was the father of 91% of the infants over a span of three years. The gestation period for this lemur is around 162 days, so they are only able to have one baby per year. After being born, The Duke Lemur Center found that the infants will hang on their mothers and be carried around for the first couple weeks of life. They will continue to hang on and around their mother until they are around five months old. The mothers have a lot of parental investment because the infant mortality rate is so high, and because there are so many males trying to compete to have her next kid that there
This is highlighting how strong of a matriarchy the Sifaka holds. A study performed by Ramanamisata et al. in 2014 showed that the Sifaka are very altruistic towards one another in a way that during a 273-hour study, …show more content…
Because of this, males must compete for the females during the mating season, which is only a month or two long. A 2007 study by Kappeler and Schäffler found that infanticide by roaming males was a common reproductive strategy to take over groups and find mates. Each group, although female predominant, had a male that was dominant as well. He could be identified with a large chest gland and elevated testosterone levels compared to the other males in the group during mating season. The polyandrous mating system of the Sifaka can be advantageous for the female because it helps to decreases the chance of infanticide, as confused adult males cannot determine paternity. However, the study found that the dominant male was the father of 91% of the infants over a span of three years. The gestation period for this lemur is around 162 days, so they are only able to have one baby per year. After being born, The Duke Lemur Center found that the infants will hang on their mothers and be carried around for the first couple weeks of life. They will continue to hang on and around their mother until they are around five months old. The mothers have a lot of parental investment because the infant mortality rate is so high, and because there are so many males trying to compete to have her next kid that there