The study below claims that primate societies degenerate when monkeys
who serve as 'police' are removed. It acknowledges that police monkeys
are part of the 'power structure' and, as such, have a better standard
of living (first dibs on food or females) but concludes that having a
power structure benefits everyone.
Does human society need government police (a power structure) to
preserve order?
Vince
-----------------------------------------------------
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn8635
Monkey cops keep clans together
Human societies rapidly descend into anarchy and chaos without policing.
Now, researchers have found that the same thing happens when groups of
monkeys are left to their own devices instead of being “policed” by
dominant males.
It was already well known that in groups of pigtailed macaques (/Macaca
nemestrina/), dominant males keep the rest in order through a form of
policing. As they patrol the herd, they frequently receive peaceful
“bared teeth” signals from other, subordinate monkeys, acknowledging
that the dominant male is in charge. The “police” macaques often
intervene to defuse scuffles before they can escalate.
To find out what happens when the primate police are missing, Jessica
Flack of the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico, US, and her colleagues
temporarily removed three of four dominant males simultaneously from a
captive group of 84 pigtailed macaques at the Yerkes National Primate
Research Center, near Lawrenceville, Georgia, US.
Disproportionate power
While they were gone, group cohesion rapidly began to disintegrate. The
researchers saw cliques forming and the breakdown of social networks and
contact through communal activities like playing, grooming and sitting
together. The amount of violence also escalated, with no one to broker
the peace.
“In our macaques, a few individuals were perceived as disproportionately
powerful. These animals are recognised as being very capable of using
force successfully,” says Flack. “One of the important implications is
this feedback between power structure and social network structure”.
Another member of the research team, Frans de Waal at the Yerkes Primate
Research Center, Emory University, Georgia, notes: "We tend to associate
power with privilege, but both in human and animal society it also
entails a constructive contribution, or at least ought to. Through their
stabilising presence and active peacekeeping, the dominant males
contribute to a more cooperative society."
Journal reference: /Nature/ (vol 439, p 426)
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