In Little Hippos, Males Beget Females

For most animals, the number of males in a population is about the same as the number of females. And that makes sense, evolutionarily. If a population were skewed toward females, for instance, males would become a hot commodity and each one would have a better chance of mating than would a male in a balanced population. Eventually, parents who had boys would accumulate more grandchildren, and the genes for producing boys would spread until the sex ratio evened out.But that explanation, known as Fisher’s Principle, is too pat. There are many species that, for a variety of environmental and social reasons, wind up with an imbalance of males and females. Typically, researchers have said that the female—usually the one that invests more time and energy into her offspring—is responsible for skewing the ratio depending on her needs. But a new study in pygmy hippos, published today in Nature Communications, shows that males can influence sex ratios, too.Read more at...Smithsonian's Surprising Science, February 2012.