Tag - It’s Tough At The Top For Alpha Male Baboons

It’s Tough At The Top For Alpha Male Baboons

Ars Technica posted on a fascinating study of baboon social hierarchy entitled “Alpha males get the ladies, extra helping of stress” (emphases mine).

If you’re a baboon, being in charge gives you a lot of advantages: you have better access to food, you get more action from the ladies, and your kids tend to grow faster and live longer…But life at the top of a baboon troop isn’t all fun and games, since the alpha male must constantly struggle to maintain his social position. A new study in Science shows that alpha males suffer from much more stress than the second highest-ranking baboon, and tend to exhibit the same amount of stress hormones as baboons much lower in the hierarchy.

To study stress in a group of wild savannah baboons, the researchers collected 4,000 fecal samples from 125 adult male baboons over nine years in Amboseli, Kenya. The scientists tested each fecal sample for a group of hormones called glucocorticoids, which can indicate how much stress each baboon was dealing with at the time.

Nine years of fecal sample study? These people are committed to their work.

The researchers found that, with one notable exception, glucocorticoid levels decreased as rank increased; in other words, low rankers experienced much more stress than higher-rankers. The exception, however, was the alphab- male’s stress levels, which were just as high as those of the low-ranking baboons. While the males that ranked second through eighth seemed to enjoy relatively low-stress lives, the alpha male experienced just as much stress as the baboons ranking ninth through fourteenth.

One of the most unexpected finding of this research is that the alpha males’ glucocorticoid levels were so different from the second-ranking males’. Two of the study’s other findings may account for the immense amount of stress that the highest-rankers experienced: they had a 17 percent higher rate of aggressive encounters with other baboons and they spent 29 percent more time mating than lower-rankers did. These physiological costs of maintaining the top spot are likely responsible for the sky-high stress levels exhibited by alpha males.

Sounds like there’s a lot of benefit to being a vassal to the big dog, you get a pretty sweet life and less violence to boot.

Mating stress? In humans, mating is usually a relaxing task (though try telling that to trying-to-conceive couples).

The stress patterns were consistent, no matter which individual held each rank; the study ran long enough for baboons to spend time at several different social ranks, and stress levels were a product of rank, rather than of consistent individual hormone profiles. In times of instability within the troop, this pattern didn’t change, but all the baboons’ stress levels went up a bit.

While short-term bursts of glucocorticoids are beneficial and can help individuals cope in stressful situations, lengthy exposure can be harmful. Over the long term, high glucocorticoid levels are known to suppress the immune system. In the study, alpha males exhibited much higher parasite loads than the baboons just beneath them in the hierarchy.

I’d be curious if alpha baboons are exposed to more pathogens due to broader sexual activity, food sources or geographic movement, which might account for part of their increased parasite load.

The researchers also noticed another interesting trend in their data: the alpha males tended to turn over more often than expected, and weren’t able to monopolize access to the troop’s females. Meanwhile, the second-ranking males managed to secure more matings than their rank suggested. While not directly tested, it’s possible that high stress levels negatively affected the health and performance of the alpha males, causing them to fall short of their reproductive potential.

A look at any organization will tell you it’s tough to stay on top – an FDR or Admiral Rickover is mindblowingly remarkable for that reason. As will a look at art or science – many stars burn quickly as they ride their one good idea until it fades into the shadows. As will discussion with pickup artists; PUAs are under constant stress keeping their game tight, and under constant threat of new and improved tactics moving in on their mating market.

Alpha turnover due to self-limiting behavior sounds like good evolutionary interest. If genetic diversity is good for populations, over the long term nature will encourage structures that allow for it, and if a narrow, immutable definition of alpha traits dominated the progeny due to monopolization of the females, the whole colony could be wiped out if the environment turned against those traits.

The study may spawn changes in methodology to utilize more finely-grained social distinctions:

Researchers often test for an effect of rank by lumping all high-ranking animals together and comparing those individuals to a group of lower-rankers. In light of this study, scientists may need to reevaluate this approach, and take into account the unique circumstances of various social ranks.

PROFESSIONAL PERSONALITY TYPES

I plan to write more on this, but it got me thinking about prototype roles in organizations. Among others you’ll see:

Deciders (executive decision-makers and true leaders)

Executive Officers (XO is a military term, civvies will recognize them as operating officers – people who square away the details)

Thinkers (generate ideas and strategies for organization to execute against)

Advisors (provide information, extra research and “WTF do you really want to do this” analysis to deciders)

Two other critical roles are concerned with an individual moreso than the organization:

Mentors (advise a worker on skills within a profession or an organization)

Coaches (retained advisors in service of a worker’s goals in a profession or career)

SECOND IN COMMAND IS PRETTY GOOD

What got me thinking about this was the sub-alpha baboon. If you can hack being a deputy (either as a thinker, advisor or XO), it’s a pretty sweet gig. Lots of the perks of being close to the boss and you have authority to direct the organization, but you don’t have to make the decisions yourself nor defend them to the outside world – and if your leader is a good one, you won’t take the fall in public in the event of a hiccup.

I’M THE DECIDER

It’s tempting for smart people to think that they should be in charge because they have the good ideas (and it seems to be getting worse with millenials who have been told they’re special all their lives). This syllogism is a major fallacy. Success requires deciders, with the help of their advisors, making good decisions, executed by competent XOs, about ideas provided by intelligent thinkers. Division of labor is mandatory. Everyone needs to be smart, but not everyone needs to be coming up with ideas – and not everyone needs to be deciding. Too many cooks spoil the broth. (Personal note: I am tempted to believe that understanding this dynamic is what got me hired to my first job. I was asked a question about what to do if my client decided against what I believed to be the best course of action. I pressed back hard with “my job is to inform him, not decide for him. I’ll make the case, and then support whatever he chooses.”)

KNOW THYSELF AND SELL IT HARD

Occasionally you find someone who can do two or more of these roles. But at a high level? That really is rare. That’s why it’s important for young people to figure out, and that right soon, what roles they are good at so they can angle for them throughout their career. (The white-collar careerism sold by colleges today is not very good at telling young people this.)