Genetic study shows that dominant males never sire the offspring of their daughters

Some mountain gorilla females linger into adulthood in the group into which they were born. In the process they also remain in the company of their father, who is often their group’s dominant male. To curb inbreeding, though, they appear to tactically avoid mating with their fathers. This strategy works so well that the chances of alpha gorilla males siring the offspring of their own daughters are effectively zero, according to Linda Vigilant of the Max Planck Institute for Anthropology in Germany. The findings are published in Springer’s journal Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology.