Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (31 page)

With large populations a linear rank order is rare; instead, little triangular loops break out in which delta dominates epsilon, epsilon dominates zeta, but zeta in addition to dominating eta also dominates delta, or maybe even someone higher up the hierarchy.
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This leads to a social complexity that may be opposed by die-hard conservative chickens.

How does the dominance hierarchy get established? When two chickens are introduced to each other, there is usually a brief squabble—involving much clucking, squawking, pecking, and feathers flying. Or else one chicken takes a good look at the other and submits without a fight, as is usually the case when an immature chicken is confronted by a healthy adult. Among vigorous hens, the winner is the better fighter, or the better bluffer. A home-court advantage is reported: A hen is more likely to win the fight in her own yard than in her adversary’s. Aggressiveness, bravery, and strength play their roles. After a single instance of dominance combat, the relationship between the two hens is often frozen; the higher-rank has the right to peck the
lower-rank without fear of retribution. Flocks in which high-ranking hens are regularly removed and replaced by total strangers fight more, eat less, lose weight, and lay fewer eggs. In the long view, the pecking order is in the interest of the chickens.
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“Playing chicken” is an American male adolescent game of 1950s vintage in which each threatens the other to see who will flinch first. The most familiar example involves automobiles speeding directly toward one another; he who swerves first may gain his life (and, incidentally, save that of his rival) but lose his status. Calling it “playing chicken” recognizes its deep evolutionary origins.
Being
chicken, in the same youth culture, means being fearful of performing a risky or heroic action. Again, the behavior of subordinates in the barnyard dominance hierarchy is evoked; again, the choice of words betrays if not real knowledge at least a suspicion of the animal roots of the practice.

Another way in which our awareness of animal dominance hierarchies has insinuated itself into the language and proves useful in describing our own behavior is the use of the phrases “top dog” for the alpha male and “underdog” for everyone else. When we say we’re for the underdog in sports or politics or economics, we’re revealing an awareness of dominance hierarchies, their injustice and their shifting fortunes.

There are monarchical social systems in which everyone is dominated by the alpha male or the few highest-ranking males, and hardly any aggression occurs in the rest of the group. The dominant male spends a considerable amount of his time calming outraged subordinates and adjudicating disputes. Sometimes justice is a little rough, but often merely a bark or grimace will suffice. In such systems especially, dominance hierarchies carry with them social stability. The males of many species have evolved potent weaponry. Life would be a lot more dangerous if every time two piranha males, or two lions, or two stags, or two elephant bulls had a difference of opinion, it was a fight to the death. The dominance hierarchy—with relative status fixed for considerable periods of time, and the institutionalization of ritualized rather than real combat in settling serious disputes—is a key survival mechanism. Not only is there a genetic advantage for the dominant male, but also for everyone else.
Pax dominatoris
. Even if you have to take a lot of abuse, even if you sometimes resent the brass,
it’s safe, maybe even comfortable, in such a system—where everyone knows his place.

So what kind of selection is this? Is it simple individual selection for the alpha male, with the benefit for other males being only incidental? Is it kin selection, because the lower-ranking males are not-too-distant relatives of the alpha? Is it group selection, because such a group, structured and stabilized by a dominance hierarchy, is more likely to survive than one in which combat to the death is the norm? Are these categories separable and distinct?

The alpha might be of a mind to attack an offending inferior, but if the latter makes the species’ characteristic submission gestures, the former feels obliged to spare him. They have not sat down and agreed on a moral code, no tablets have been carried down from the mountain, but the postural and gestural inhibitions to violence work very much like a moral code.

One of the most spectacular examples of dominance behavior in groups—known among animals as different as birds, antelopes, and (perhaps) midges—is called the lek:

Perhaps spring break at Ft. Lauderdale or Daytona Beach is one of the more conspicuously lekish human institutions.

Among reptiles, amphibians, and even crustaceans, dominance behavior is common.
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The varanids (such as the komodo dragon) are very good at ritualized and stereotyped intimidation displays. They rattle or lash their tails, rear up on their hind legs, inflate their throats, and, if their rival has not yet submitted, attempt to wrestle him to the
ground. In crocodiles, dominance is established by slapping the head into the water, roaring, lunging, chasing, and biting, pretend or real. When interrupted in his mating embrace, a male frog croaks; the deeper his croak, the greater his implied size when disengaged, and the more diffident is the would-be intruder. A toothless, brightly colored Central American frog, genus
Dendrobates
, intimidates intruders by performing a vigorous sequence of push-ups. But among the skinks, in which aggression is released seasonally when the heads of the males turn bright red, the virtues of intimidation by bluff are often lost sight of, and the two rivals tear into each other without so much as a preliminary throat swelling. When hermit crabs introduce themselves, they devote a few seconds to taking each other’s measure—by stroking one another with their antennae; the smaller then promptly submits to the larger.
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Stalk-eyed flies do the same; the more dominant individuals are the ones with the more widely separated eyes.

It’s rare that any male starts out as an alpha. Generally you have to work your way up through the ranks. But in the intervals between your challenges it would be a mistake to be too disruptive. Even for the very ambitious a talent for subordination and submission is needed. Also, it’s hard to predict who will achieve high-ranking status. Sometimes greatness is thrust upon unsuspecting animals by the course of events. Accordingly, everyone needs to be able to rise to the occasion. If you’re in a linear hierarchy, you must know how to dominate the animals below you and submit to those above. An inclination for both dominance and submission must beat within the same breast. Complex challenges make for complex animals.

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Nothing we’ve said so far indicates anything about female preference. What if she finds the alpha male arrogant, boorish, taking too much for granted? Or just plain ugly? Does she have the right to refuse? At least among hamsters, this is not an option.

Here’s an experiment
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done on Syrian hamsters by the psychologist Patricia Brown and her colleagues: To begin, males, matched for size and body weight, were allowed to interact with one another in pairs to establish dominance. Chasing and biting were among the behaviors counted as dominant; defensive postures, evasions, raised tails, and full cowering submission were counted as subordinate traits. The
dominants accounted for over ten times more aggressive acts than an equal number of subordinate animals; the subordinate animals tallied ten times more submissive acts than those judged dominant. It never took more than an hour for a pair of hamsters to decide who was dominant and who was subordinate.

Now although these males knew how to fight, they’d never had a sexual experience. Each of them was made to wear a little leather harness attached to a tether, which, like a dog’s leash, limited how far he could roam. Next, an ovulating female was released; she could have access to the tethered males, but beyond a certain point their leashes would prevent them from following her or offering unwelcome attentions. Whatever sexual contact might be in the offing would be on her terms.

We imagine her, steely-eyed, slowly looking the males over head to tail in their kinky leather outfits. Because the earlier dominance conflict was largely ritual, there were no injuries to betray which was the subordinate animal. Each male was in its own partitioned area, so they could not see one another and betray to the female their relative status through gestures of dominance or submission. Would she, despite the absence of signs apparent to the human observers, select the dominant male? Or would she find some other trait more attractive? The females were not hesitant or demure. In less than five minutes, every one of them presented herself for copulation to one of the males. In every case it was the dominant male. Prior familiarity was not required. Somehow she knew. There were no questions asked about his education, family, financial prospects, or the gentleness of his disposition. Every female was eager for sex with the dominant male.

How could the female know? The answer seems to be that she could smell dominance. There is literally a chemistry between them, the odor of power. The dominant males give off some effluvium, some pheromone that subordinate males do not.
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“I’m a celebrity. That’s what celebrities do,” offered one-time heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson in explaining his scattershot propositioning of virtually every contestant at a beauty pageant. Former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, not known for his looks, explained a beautiful actress’s attraction to him in these words: “Power is the greatest aphrodisiac.”

Dominant males preferentially copulate with attractive females. The females are as accommodating as they can be. They crouch down, they raise their hindquarters, they lift their tails out of the way. (We’re back to hamsters.) In Brown’s rodents-in-motorcycle-jackets experiment, during the first half hour of mating the number of “intromissions” by dominant males averaged 40; those subordinate males able to score at all (usually after the dominants were done) averaged a measly 1.6 for the half hour.

Now suppose you grow up in a society in which such behavior is the community standard. Wouldn’t you tend to conclude that the animal who mounts and who makes repeated pelvic thrusts is the dominant partner, while the animal who crouches, who is receptive and passive, is subordinate in rank? Would it be surprising if this powerful symbol of dominance and submission were generalized in the gestural and postural vocabulary of the status-obsessed males?

Before the invention of language, animals need clear symbols to communicate with one another. There’s a well-developed non-verbal language, which we’ve already described, including “My belly’s up and I surrender” and “I could bite you but I won’t, so let’s be friends.” It would be very natural if everyday reminders of status in the rank hierarchy were established by brief ceremonial mountings of males by males. He who mounts is dominant; he who is mounted is subordinate. No “intromission” is required. Such symbolic language is in fact widespread, and we will discuss it in greater detail in later chapters. It may have little or no overt sexual content.

Under natural conditions, ordinary Norway rats—the same common variety whose social structure collapsed in Calhoun’s overcrowding experiments—arrange themselves into social hierarchies. A dominant might approach a submissive animal, sniff and lick its anogenital area, and mount it from the rear, holding on with the forepaws. The submissive animal might elevate its hindquarters so as to indicate its eagerness to be mounted. Male aggression in maintaining the dominance hierarchy includes banging flanks, rolling over and kicking, pinning the opponent with the forepaws, and boxing—the two animals actually stand toe-to-toe and let loose with left jabs and right uppercuts. Under normal conditions it’s rare that anyone is injured.

Even among lobsters the aggressive posture is to stand upright—indeed,
on their toes (or at least the tips of their claws). The submissive posture is flat on the ground, legs somewhat akimbo. The idea is to show that you can’t (quickly) do any harm, even if you want to. Many gestures in a similar spirit can be found among humans. Police confronting possibly armed suspects will order them to raise their hands (so it’s clear they’re weaponless); or clasp their hands behind their necks (ditto); or lean at a high inclination angle against a wall (so their hands must support them); or lie prone. Submissive words are well and good (“I didn’t mean nothin’, honest”), but a police officer putting his or her life on the line requires a firmer postural guarantee.

In almost all higher mammals copulation occurs with the male entering the female’s vagina from behind. The female crouches down to assist the male in mounting her. She may make special motions to aid his entry, and those motions, like the bump and grind, become part of the symbolic language of enticement. The reason for the crouch is partly to present a favorable geometry for entry, but it also indicates that she has no intention of going anywhere. She’s not about to run away. Something similar can be seen in many other species. A male beetle come a-courting taps on the female’s carapace—in different beetle species, drumming with his feet, his antennae, his mouthparts, or his genitals—and she is instantly immobilized.
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The strange attractiveness to men of grotesquely deformed small feet (in China for nearly a millennium), and of very high heels (throughout the modern West), as well as traditional, constraining women’s clothing
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and the fetish of female helplessness in general, may be a human manifestation of the same symbolism.