Almost all were female-on-male attacks. Parish cast the net wider and discovered shocking tales from zoos all around the world. At Wilhelma, a zoo in Stuttgart, Germany, for example, two females attacked a male and bit his penis in half (a microsurgeon repaired the damage and the male went on to reproduce). Each zoo had their own folkloric story about what was ‘wrong’ with their males because this pattern of aggression wasn’t what people thought was ‘natural’. Parish looked at the data through a different lens and came to the landmark realization: this was a species with female dominance.
