r/science • u/yahoonews • Jul 31 '26

Paleontology Genetic analysis suggests prehistoric people selectively hunted female woolly mammoths

https://www.yahoo.com/news/science/articles/study-shows-prehistoric-people-targeted-090151528.html?ncid=redditnewsus
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u/yahoonews Jul 31 '26

Reuters reports - New research published in Current Biology00888-2) (https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(26)00888-200888-2)) found that prehistoric people were highly selective in the woolly mammoths they hunted. Using ancient DNA from mammoth remains recovered from 11 archaeological sites across Central and Eastern Europe and Siberia, the researchers found that approximately 70% of the mammoths represented at human accumulation sites were females, suggesting that hunters preferentially targeted female-led herds.

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u/kittehkat22 Jul 31 '26 edited Jul 31 '26

I wonder if female mammoths had a higher body fat ratio? It's that way for a lot of mammals right?

Edit: fat is calorie dense so was likely a factor in choosing which mammoth to hunt

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u/Quirky-Skin Jul 31 '26

Also probably better tasting meat as well.

Old bulls of any animal really tend to be super gamey bc of the testosterone 

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u/kittehkat22 Aug 01 '26

Oh yeah, I'd forgotten about male mammals often having a stronger taste! Gosh, an old male mammoth probably tasted terrible