In bats, and many other mammals, females are not smaller than males
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Male mammals have long been said to be larger than females – a phenomenon known as sexual dimorphism – but it turns out that may not be the norm. An analysis of the body mass of over 400 mammal species revealed that only about 44 per cent had larger males.
“There has been huge taxonomic bias”, in what types of mammals have been examined for body size dimorphism, says Kaia Tombak at Hunter College in New York. There has been …