In cattle and many other animals, the alpha male may try to gather around him a harem of females and chase away the other males, but his success is often limited. When the breeding time has passed, the males return to their solitary ways and the females (and young) resume their own social grouping. Among deer this is called a hind group and entails its own dominance hierarchy. Commonly, the leader of such communities is determined not by bluff, threat, or fighting ability, but by age: The oldest fertile female leads. (The same convention is adopted among all-female herds of African elephants; even when composed of hundreds of elephants, the social structure is extremely stable.) These groups seem to be organized around protection. When attacked, they form a diamond- or spindle-shaped pattern, with the alpha female in front and the beta bringing up the rear. If the pursuers are gaining, the beta female may valorously stop short and engage the leading predator. As the rest of the group makes its escape, the alpha and beta may then exchange sentry duty.
In skirmishes the advantages of the dominance hierarchy are clear. Even female mammals who evince little enthusiasm for individual dominance nevertheless arrange themselves into battle hierarchies in times of trouble. So dominance hierarchies have at least two functions, extremely useful both for individuals and for the group: They reduce dangerous and divisive fighting within the group (promoting what we might call political stability); and they are optimized for inter-group and interspecies conflict (providing what we might call military preparedness).
A third purported advantage of dominance hierarchies is that they preferentially propagate the genes of the alphas, those who are physically or behaviorally fit. We might imagine a common conditional strategy for everyone in the group that would go something like: “If I’m big and strong, I intimidate; if I’m small and weak, I retreat.” This benefits everyone one way or another, and the sole focus is on the “I.”
Being human, we naturally feel some whiff of resentment when we imagine ourselves dropped into such a dominance hierarchy with its craven submissiveness and manifest cruelties. Being human, we might also imagine the pleasures of a well-run social machine in which everybody knows his place, in which nobody gets out of line and causes trouble, in which deference and respect to superiors is routinely shown. Depending on whether we come from a more democratic or a more authoritarian upbringing, schooling, or society, we might feel that the benefits of the dominance hierarchy outweigh any affront to freedom and dignity, or vice versa. But this discussion isn’t yet about us. Humans are not red deer or hamsters or hamadryas baboons. For these species the cost-benefit analysis has been made. For them, law-and-order is the higher good. That there are innate individual rights and liberties of hamsters, needing institutional protection, is not a self-evident truth.
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To play the hierarchy game, at the very least you must be able to remember who’s who, to recognize rank, and to make the appropriate responses, dominant or submissive as circumstances dictate. The ranks are not fixed in time, so you must be able to reassess and revise facts of central importance. Dominance hierarchies bring benefits, but require thinking and flexibility. It’s not enough to have inherited nucleic acid instructions on how to threaten and how to submit. You must be able to apply those behaviors appropriately to a changing array of acquaintances, allies, rivals, lovers—whose dominance status is situational and whose identity and current circumstances cannot possibly be encoded in the nucleic acids. As is also true for hunting and escape strategies or learning from parents, hierarchies require brains. Nevertheless, the instructions in the genes are often vastly more in control than whatever wisdom resides in the brain.
Early on, animals may not have been very adept at distinguishing individuals, contenting themselves with “If he gives off my favorite sex attractant, he’s my guy.” In interaction with predator and prey, or in the sexual adventuring of males who are not obliged to care for the offspring, there’s no high premium on the niceties of individual recognition. Then you can get away with “They all smell the same to me” or “They’re all the same in the dark.” Then you can stereotype and there are few adaptive penalties you must pay. But as evolutionary time passes, finer distinctions must be made. It might be useful to know who the father of your child is so you can encourage him to play a role in raising and protecting it. It might be useful to know the exact position of all the other males in the dominance hierarchy if you wish to avoid daily conflicts about rank, or if you wish to advance up the ladder.
One of the many surprises in modern primate research is how readily the human observer—even if wholly insensitive to olfactory cues—can distinguish and recognize all the baboons in the troop, all the chimps in the band. If you spend a little time with them, they no longer all “look alike.” It takes some motivation and a little thought, but it’s well within our powers. Without such individual recognition, the greater part of the social life of higher animals, as of humans, remains hidden from us. With humans—because of language, dress, and behavioral eccentricities—individual recognition is much easier. Still, the temptation to divide humans and other species into a small number of stereotyped categories, rather than recognizing differences and judging individuals one at a time, remains deep within us.
Racism, sexism, and a toxic mix of xenophobias still powerfully influence action and inaction. But one of the proudest achievements of our own age is the developing global consensus—despite many false starts—that we’re at last ready to leave behind this vestige of long ago. Many ancient voices speak within us. We are capable of muting some, once they no longer serve our best interests, and amplifying others as our need for them increases. This is cause for hope.
As for the larger issue of dominance and submission, the jury is still out. True, all but the pomp and costume of monarchy have, in the last few centuries, been swept off the world stage, and attempts at democracy seem fitfully to be breaking out planetwide. But the call of the alpha male and the compliant assent of the omegas remain the daily litany of human social and political organization.
ON IMPERMANENCE
As for Man, his days are as grass; as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth.
For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more.
Psalm 103, verses 15,16, King James translation
* Alpha also dominates gamma and those below gamma; beta dominates delta and those below delta, and so on Since more animals submit than dominate, it might with greater justice be called a submission hierarchy than a dominance hierarchy But we humans are transfixed by dominance and often, at least in the West and setting religion aside, a little repelled by submission Vast libraries are written on “leadership” and virtually nothing on “followership”* The very recent history of human warfare provides a contrast: The alphas—generally old men—sequester themselves in safety, often where the young women are, and dispatch the subordinates—generally young men—out to fight and die. In no other species have alpha males gotten away with such cushy arrangements for themselves. It does require at least implicit cooperation between the alphas of rival groups, but this can often be arranged Apart from the social insects, no other species has been clever enough to invent war It is an institution optimally configured to benefit the alphas