Overview

• Female gorillas won about 28 percent of recorded agonistic encounters against adult non-alpha males despite weighing roughly half as much.
• In multi-male groups, 88 percent of females achieved a higher rank than at least one subordinate male.
• Females with stronger social bonds to the alpha male were significantly more likely to assert dominance over other males.
• Dominant females secured priority access to scarce, high-value resources such as sodium-rich decaying wood, demonstrating nonviolent power strategies.
• The research challenges the notion that sexual dimorphism inevitably produces male-biased power asymmetries in human evolution.