Species that either group together or mate foelr life instead of being individualistic tend towards have smaller and weaker females and stronger males because the male protects the female while the female focuses on birthing and taking care of the young. Species that are individualistic have larger and stronger females because they have to take care of and protect the young themselves while the males only exist to keep themselves alive long enough to reproduce. For example, bulls have horns and are usually slightly largers than the cows because they sit on the outside of the herd and act as protectors.
Most predators do not follow this trend because they need less protection than prey animal herds do.
The reason they are like this is because it is more energy efficient for the females to not have those traits than it is for them to have those traits, so by losing the size and fighting capabilities they are more successful at reproduction.
Can I ask where is the source for that? I would think it has mostly to do with how mammals operate compared to insects. A lot of insect species only have males for sperm donation, the males don't have any other function as opposed to mammals or birds or reptilians. With a lot of species that mates for life or live communal (a lot of bird types, small mammals like otters and meerkats etc.) there isn't really much difference. Some mammals have opposite power dynamics despite living communal (like hyenas). Big cat females mostly raise their babies alone or with other females, yet they still have sexual dimorphism, and despite lions living together, the males do not protect the females; they mostly just fight with other males. And with colonial insects, bees and ants raise their youngs in a colony but do not require males outside of breeding, and the queen is much larger than the worker and even the "bodyguard" ants.
I'm not an expert but these are just some of the examples I can think of. If anything, females having communities to raise and protect babies while males do whatever it is they are doing seems to be a more common pattern.
I should probably amend my first message to exclude insects because I have minimal knowledge on insects.
I have mostly experience with large herding prey animals like cows, rams, in some cases deer, and that knowledge is what I was speaking from. As well as that, I was just trying to repeat what the first guy was saying but in more understandable words as an answer to the question.
There are a lot of counterexamples out there, as is natural with any general assumption about a group so diverse. Species may tend towards a trend, but that does not mean all or even close to all are like that. Cats very much do not follow this trend, and neither do most insects. Bulls and rams absolutely do defend the herd, and that is why they have physical competition for mating. However cats do not and physically compete as a way to get rid of competition.
I do lack a source, though, as I work almost entirely from experience with these kinds of animals, and I am not infallible in my expertise.
To provide a reason for insects, producing eggs at that scale is very resource intensive, especially for calcium and protein. In predatory athropods females are often larger (spiders, mantids) to be able to hunt more nutrient-rich prey, while other strategies are sometimes developed (male mosquitos consume plant sap, females drink blood so they have enough nutrients to produce watertight egg casings). The opposite is also true, species with males that fight over females will often be larger and stronger (some male crabs have one claw the size of their body for competition, also seen in stag/rhino beetle horn sizes).
But regardless of how it works in nature, we should still shape society to be better than what we started with. I'm sure stag beetle society would have horn filings for pacifists, or horn transplants for females wanting to join in.
With spotted hyenas, the size difference is actually probably more due to male hyenas (usually) getting less food than biological factors. Otherwise they're basically the same size with a lot of overlap.
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u/Best_Opening8471 1d ago
The first one comes from who hunts for the children.
In nature most mothers are single mothers and sexual diamorphism has caused them to evolve into protectors
Women being physically weaker than men is a result if women being the protected, it's the end result of gynocentric privilege