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Macaques at Japan reserve get first alpha female in 70-year history

theguardian.com

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Re: Macaques at Japan reserve get first alpha female in 70-year history

#61

Post by Blikkentrekker »

lm28469 wrote: post #12
graderjs wrote: post #9

This is awesome. To get the top job, she: beat up her own mother; then took on the existing alpha 4x her age, and probably larger; then in the next 'peanut session' he had to backdown and let her eat first; and now she walks with an erect tail and goes and shakes trees for fun--It expresses her power. How cool is that! It just goes to show, it's never about gender, just about choices, ambition and how brave you choos…

> beat up her own mother > just about choices and how brave you choose to be Reminds me of Hollywood directors who think "alpha" women characters have to be regular women with all the traits of "toxic masculinity"

What example are you thinking of?

Re: Macaques at Japan reserve get first alpha female in 70-year history

#62

Post by sizzle »

whatshisface wrote: post #56
lkrubner wrote: post #51

We should expect to see this throughout the world, as the climate crisis intensifies. We should expect to see this especially in intelligent or social species. Game theory predicts that, from the point of view of parents, when the population is expanding it is better to have sons and when the population is shrinking it is better to have daughters. A son might have a lot of children when times are good and zero childr…

That makes no sense to me because for every child a daughter has, someone's son had a child. It has to balance out unless someone invents monkey mitosis.

In nature, males can impregnate many females and do not have to necessarily be around to rear their many offspring. So it is advantageous to have many females that can procreate with less males to increase the population size at a higher rate than more males and less females to mate with.

Re: Macaques at Japan reserve get first alpha female in 70-year history

#63

Post by IanClarke »

whatshisface wrote: post #56
lkrubner wrote: post #51

We should expect to see this throughout the world, as the climate crisis intensifies. We should expect to see this especially in intelligent or social species. Game theory predicts that, from the point of view of parents, when the population is expanding it is better to have sons and when the population is shrinking it is better to have daughters. A son might have a lot of children when times are good and zero childr…

That makes no sense to me because for every child a daughter has, someone's son had a child. It has to balance out unless someone invents monkey mitosis.

A few man have a lot of offspring, which is how it makes sense again.

Re: Macaques at Japan reserve get first alpha female in 70-year history

#64

Post by sandworm101 »

whatshisface wrote: post #56
lkrubner wrote: post #51

We should expect to see this throughout the world, as the climate crisis intensifies. We should expect to see this especially in intelligent or social species. Game theory predicts that, from the point of view of parents, when the population is expanding it is better to have sons and when the population is shrinking it is better to have daughters. A son might have a lot of children when times are good and zero childr…

That makes no sense to me because for every child a daughter has, someone's son had a child. It has to balance out unless someone invents monkey mitosis.

>> It has to balance out

It doesn't. In a species with 50/50 split between male and female, the number of males is almost irrelevant to population growth. Take rabbits. If you kill at birth 90% of the males, the population growth won't slow as the limit is the number of babies per-female. The 10% of males that survive simply father more kids via more females. Males can do that. Females cannot. Going one step further, killing all those males increases the resources available to the females. Ironically, culling those males can cause a population to grow faster than if they lived.

Re: Macaques at Japan reserve get first alpha female in 70-year history

#67

Post by fao_ »

prestigious wrote: post #65

That's funny, I keep hearing from largely feminists that "alpha's don't exist in nature, it's a myth"

"""In 1970, the book The Wolf: Ecology and Behavior of an Endangered Species was published, written by David Mech. It was a success. The book helped to popularize the alpha concept, because many people referred to Mech's work.

Mech has written on his website that he repeatedly asked the publisher to stop printing the book because much of the information is outdated — including the concept behind the alpha wolf. Nevertheless, the book is still being sold."""

https://phys.org/news/2021-04-wolf-dont-alpha-males-females....

Re: Macaques at Japan reserve get first alpha female in 70-year history

#69

Post by Tiktaalik »

Slow_Hand wrote: post #68

Hasn’t the concept of alphas been discredited/debunked by the originator of the concept? Or is that strictly for wolves?

Maybe "alpha" wolves have been debunked, but there are lots of research that points to matriarchal animal clan organization in other species.

Resident Orcas would be a notable example.

Re: Macaques at Japan reserve get first alpha female in 70-year history

#70

Post by IanClarke »

Slow_Hand wrote: post #68

Hasn’t the concept of alphas been discredited/debunked by the originator of the concept? Or is that strictly for wolves?

The originator of the (generic) concept "alpha" (please let us know who this is / who you think this is) has discontinued the term "alpha" (quite an alpha-decision from him, I would say) due to new insights discovered when observing wolves. Alpha does not exist for wolves (presumably)... and in general. To extend just further (why not) the concept gets fully discontinued, due to public pressure, because everything is equal anyway.
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