In the death of mammoths, the males accused their bachelor lifestyle
Russian, Swedish and Dutch scientists have found that male woolly mammoths are more often females fall into natural traps, such as in swamps, and died.
Scientists have suggested that such negligence was caused by the lifestyle of these mammals. Probably, like modern elephants, the young males mammoths lived the “bachelor” groups or singly. Therefore, they are more likely to fall into traps due to lack of experience, and to get them out of there often was none. A study published in Current Biology.
Woolly mammoths inhabited the North of Eurasia and North America in the Pleistocene and early Holocene. About ten thousand years ago on the mainland mammoths became extinct; a small population continued to live on the island of St. Paul in the Bering sea, and on Wrangel island near Chukotka. But about 5.6 and four thousand years ago has disappeared and they.
The researchers believe that many of the remains of mammoths are so well preserved because the animals died once in a natural trap. They failed under the ice or in the swamp, in the mud or bitumen pits and there was “buried” without access of air. Researchers analyzed the anatomy of the remains of mammoths trapped in one of these traps in North America, and found out that there were 13 young males and only one female.