The Primate Police

An anonymous reader writes "LiveScience reports on research indicating that certain monkeys act like cops in a group. When they removed the enforcers, the monkey society fell apart. The rest of the monkeys quickly formed cliques with friends and family and interaction between the groups ceased. More interesting is how the monkeys 'vote' for their law enforcement officials, by baring their teeth to show deference. From the article: 'When an individual receives these voting signals from most of the group, it shows he is well respected--or feared--and he becomes the new sheriff in town.'"

Comments

Monkeys and middle-schoolers

[Lonesome Squash]

My wife teaches at a small middle school. For years she was complaining about this one class. Far more than other classes at this school, this one was torn apart by clicquishness, mean gossip, social scheming, climbing, backstabbing, deliberate exclusion, etc. -- all the sins for which middle school is notorious. She often said that the problem was that there were no clearly dominant figures in the class. If the dominant figures are nice, then the class tends to be nice. If they are miserable, the class tends to be miserable. But when they were absent, it caused anxiety and uncertainty that led to a loss of minimal standards of social behavior.

*sigh* So we're monkeys. At least we don't throw excrement at each other. Mostly.

Not just with monkeys -- dogs too.

[ClickOnThis]

You'll see the same kind of behaviour with dogs at a dog park. If two dogs get into a fight, other dogs often try to 'break it up'. The peacemakers aren't necessarily the alphas either -- more often they're the betas.

I think it has something to do with an innate instinct to protect the pack, sort of like: "don't hurt each other -- we're a pack and we need everybody, and besides, there are no veterinarians out here." Well not really, but you know what I mean.