If two females in a pack become pregnant by the same male...

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DawnWings
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If two females in a pack become pregnant by the same male...

Post by DawnWings » Thu Sep 27, 2018 10:31 pm

If two females in a pack become pregnant by the same male, is there any significant chance one female will kill the other female?

The reason I'm asking is there is a game called Zoo Tycoon 2, and if you have one male wolf and two female wolves in the same exhibit, both females will become mates with the same male, and one female will kill the other female. I already know wolves are generally monogamous and on rare occasions some large packs will raise two litters, I just wonder if this situation in Zoo Tycoon 2 has any grain of truth to it or if it can happen in real-life?

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Re: If two females in a pack become pregnant by the same mal

Post by Legendary Sucker » Fri Sep 28, 2018 12:48 pm

I searched for it, but didn't find anything related to one female killing another. -link-
What I did found is that the dominant female might kill the pups of another female, and since they are meant to be a pack, that makes much more sense. It's important to say that for this to happen depends on a lot of things, such as how much food they have, how dominant is the female/male in the sight of the pack.

Now.. getting out of solid facts.. Once I heard about a wolf that mated with two females from the same litter and they raised the pups together, so I'd say it depends on a lot of factors... but it appears to be more likely for a female to kill the other's litter than the adult female.
Interesting question
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Re: If two females in a pack become pregnant by the same mal

Post by DawnWings » Fri Sep 28, 2018 9:40 pm

That makes sense. Zoo Tycoon 2 just had me confused because it attempts to be fairly educational with the real animals, but the series does have plenty of fantasy elements like revived dinosaurs and unicorns in it, so I do know not to take everything in those games at face value.

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Re: If two females in a pack become pregnant by the same mal

Post by valkea » Fri Sep 28, 2018 9:51 pm

From the sounds of it, studies on this matter conflict with each other and with other facts, as do a lot of the answers generally given for why this happens in ZT2. I do believe that in the real world this would be rather unlikely as wolves generally avoid fighting at all costs, because even a small injury can be fatal due to the harshness of a wolf's life. However, I am not an expert on wolves and the reaction of these females would likely vary depending on a lot of factors as was explained above me.

On the gaming side of things, ZT2 is a rather old game and is somewhat limited in its design because of that, and definitely has a lot of strange glitches and other oddities (e.g. female velociraptors killing their own hatchlings immediately upon their hatching doesn't exactly sound like something that would've happened in real life... otherwise there would've been no velociraptors). Being rather old now, a lot of its information is also now inaccurate anyway due to new studies and findings.
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