The rock hyrax, Procavia capensis, abhors a heirarchyWIKIMEDIA, AMADA44
Equality for all...hyraxes
For rock hyraxes, small herbivores that are distant evolutionary cousins of elephants, it's not the size of their social networks that matter—it's the level of egalitarianism that exists in those networks, report researchers working in Israel. Tel Aviv University zoologist Amiyaal Ilany and colleagues observed populations of the social mammals in an Israeli nature reserve, and found that the animals formed interconnected groups of different types: some networks were characterized by more equality, with each individual sharing a similar number of relationships of roughly equal strength, while other groups were dominated by few individuals with larger and stronger networks. Ilany and his coauthors published their results in PLoS ONE last month, reporting that hyraxes in more egalitarian groups lived several years longer ...
