this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2025
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From the couple of books by Jane Goodall I read, there absolutely was a 'top dawg' male in the Gombe chimp troop for as long as she was around to study it.
Sometimes it would be based on force of personality; sometimes on strength & size, sometimes on wiliness and psychological tricks, and another time due to two brothers teaming up together. Regardless, after the fall of one, another would inevitably take its place.
IIRC Sapolski also observed that most baboon troops indeed had a heirarchy, with the top dawg there typically taking out its frustrations on the next-ranking member down, and so forth down the line. That said, he also observed that when the most aggressive males sometimes died off due to disease / etc, the resultant troops could function remarkably differently, in which there was more of an egalitarian matriarchy.
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