this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2025
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I was never asked to be a part of the study.
Lol.
Has this study been replicated, and what's the definition of "Alpha" they're using.
Hate to have to ask the replication question, since it's such a fundamental element of science, but the rampant p-hacking forces it to be asked anymore. Plus upwards of 80% of research in the psychology world is ~~unreliable~~,irreproduceable and this falls within that realm.
Yea, we know the original work on Alpha animals isn't replicable too, but decades ago (before any of us had seen research on Alpha), we observed "top/lead dog" behaviour in dog training circles (circles which include many vets), without anyone telling us about it.
There's something there, it deserves proper, replicable study.
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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