Dominance relationships in captive female African lions are ameliorated by oxytocin administration

Free-ranging female African lions maintain symmetrical social relationships by respecting each other’s “ownership” of valuable food items rather than by supplanting subordinates according to well-defined dominance hierarchies. However, captivity often skews relationships in captive carnivores, whereas oxytocin elicits prosocial effects in virtually all mammals.  We therefore investigated whether captive female lions demonstrate obvious dominance relationships, and, if so, we hypothesized that oxytocin would reduce asymmetries between dominants and subordinates. We designed two experimental protocols for investigating pairwise relationships.  We first identified dominant individuals by performing neutral trials that allowed each female equal opportunity to possess the food item.  Second, we performed non-neutral trials that biased the opportunity for subordinates to gain possession (“ownership”) of the food and thereby determined whether dominants would still gain access t..., Subjects
All trials were performed at Lionsrock Sanctuary FOURPAWS, in South Africa, between February and October 2023. Procedures were approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee of the University of Minnesota, and in accordance with ARRIVE guidelines. All subjects (n=20 females, 10 pairs) were healthy female adults in prime condition, housed in greater than 1 hectare, species-appropriate enclosures, and were selected by sanctuary staff based on health and availability. All 20 female lions were included equally across trials and analyses. No studies were performed on females who were lactating, pregnant, or in estrus, and no animals in this study were used for breeding purposes. Pairs were selected for the study that had been housed amicably together since early adolescence or birth (direct levels of relatedness are unclear due to the nature of rescues), and all individuals were similar in age and condition within each pair.
Trial types
Dominance can be characterized as..., , # Dominance relationships in captive female African lions are ameliorated by oxytocin administration

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.8931zcs0h](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.8931zcs0h)

This dataset includes behavioral measurements taken from pairs of captive female African lions tested for dominant-subordinate relationships during two trial types, neutral and non-neutral, and under two conditions, oxytocin and control. We measured behaviors including possession, body proximity to each other, vocal and physical aggression occurrences, as well as the level of aggression and who initiated the aggressive occurrence. We also measured body position and whether or not the subordinate female retreats during possession. We determined that dominance does exist between female African lions in captivity, regardless of their egalitarian nature in the wild. The researcher was blinded to the treatment, so the pairs were originally separated into groups (included in data), and treatment order was rand...,