Mongooses synch their reproductive cycles

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Fascinating… you see synchronized reproductive cycles in plants, insects, coral, and fish but I don’t think I’d ever heard of it in mammals before. Thanks for the link!

It’s tempting to interpret this in terms of human social dominance patterns (as io9 seems to) but there are probably plenty of reasons such behavior would be beneficial to the colony in evolutionary terms. It’s not necessarily a simple “strong preying on the weak, so the weak get sneaky” situation; the group as a whole (including the less dominant females) most likely benefits from enforced reproductive synchrony.

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