The higher accident rate among inexperienced males, the researchers suggest, could be explained by a lack of female leadership among wandering males. We can use modern mammals, especially elephants, as a model for this social structure. A common habit among mammals is “male dispersal,” in which female members of a group are geographically restricted by tending to their offspring, whereas males often wander to areas with less sexual competition. If young male mammoths wandered the planes of Siberia, they likely encountered environmental hazards like mud pits and thin ice that they hadn’t been taught to properly navigate.