Why hierarchical promiscuity?
Mating systems are based on female choice and social behavior, because the female has a larger investment in the offspring. Females attempt to find a mate with high fitness levels while males behave to maximize their fitness (Wittenberger, 1980). Thus males compete for the females and different mating systems arise depending on female dispersion. Males prefer harem polygyny so they can exclusively mate with females, but if the size of the female group increases, one male is not able to defend all of the females and thus multiple males will defend the females forming a hierarchical promiscuity mating system (Wittenberger, 1980). Therefore, hierarchical promiscuity is observed in giraffes because female groups can be large, female homeranges are much to large for one male to control, and the location of females at any point in time is not predictable. Also, it is not possible for males to predict which females are in estrus until they use the “flemen” behavior since females go into estru
