Bitch: On the Female of the Species

by Lucy Cooke

Recall the savannah baboons we met in the previous chapter. High-status females have it all: first dibs at food sources and a high-ranking protection racket for them and their babies. Low-status mums and their offspring are subject to constant bullying by those above. The resulting stress impacts their reproductive capacity. Low-ranking females breed later, ovulate less frequently and can even spontaneously abort as a result of being persistently terrorized by dominants. As Sarah Blaffer Hrdy notes, across primate species ‘high rank carries with it not only freedom from harassment and exploitation by more dominant females, but also this sinister prerogative to interfere in the reproduction of other females