WEBVTT

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Well, I have known
many alpha males in my life,

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chimpanzee alpha males,

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and I'm going to talk
about what an alpha male is,

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because I think we can all learn
a lot from our close relatives

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where we have alpha males.

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And as an example, I want to give you
Amos, a male that I knew

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who was a young male
and he was alpha male,

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he was very popular,

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but he got sick

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and he lost his position because,
you know, chimpanzee males

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they can spot from a mile away
if you are weak

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and they went for him,

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and he lost his position,
and then he got sicker and sicker

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until at some point we had to isolate him.

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The group lived on a grassy island,

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and we had to isolate him in a cage,

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but we cracked open the cage
so that the rest of the chimps

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still had access to him.

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And what happened was most touching.

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Other chimps would bring food to him,

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they would bring wood wool to him,

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which is this thing that they use
to sleep in and build nests out of,

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and females would put
the wood wool behind his back.

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He was leaning heavily against the wall,

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and the way we do with pillows
to patients in a hospital,

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they were putting
that stuff behind his back.

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And I thought, this is the way
to go for an alpha male.

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He was loved and respected,
and everyone was taking care of him,

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and this is not always how it goes,

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because some males don't end so well
when they lose their position.

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So Amos was an example
of a male who was liked as a leader,

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and I think the term alpha male,
if you look it up on the internet,

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you will find all these business books
that tell you how to be an alpha male,

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and what they mean
is how to beat up others

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and beat them over the head
and let them know that you are boss

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and don't mess with me and so on.

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And basically an alpha male
for them is a bully.

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And I really don't like
that kind of description,

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because I am actually partly responsible
for the term "alpha male"

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because I wrote this book
"Chimpanzee Politics,"

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which was recommended by Newt Gingrich
to freshmen congressmen.

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I don't know what good it did,
but he recommended that book to them,

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and after that the term
"alpha male" became very popular.

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But I think it is used
in a mischaracterization.

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It's used in a very superficial way

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that doesn't relate
to what a real alpha male is.

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And so I'm here to explain what that is.

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The term itself goes back
actually much further.

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It goes back to the '40s and '50s,
research on wolves,

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and basically the definition
is very simple.

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The highest ranking male
is the alpha male.

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The highest ranking female
is the alpha female.

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Every primate group
has one alpha male, one alpha female,

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not more than that, there's only one.

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And I will explain how that goes.

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So first, the body language.

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What you see here is two male chimpanzees
who are the same size,

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but one is walking upright,
has his hair up,

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has a big rock in his hand,
and he's the alpha male.

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The other male is pant-grunting to him,

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is being submissive to him
and bowing for him,

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and that is the sort of ritual they need
to go through many times a day

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in order to have a stable relationship.

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I'll show you a video from the field.

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What you will see here
is a female pant-grunting to an alpha male

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and you will see how that goes.

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The male is approaching,

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she grunts at him.

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(Chimpanzee grunts)

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He has all his hair up

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and he displays.

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I'm actually standing far too close.

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A chimpanzee is far stronger than I am,

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and I just was not very prudent,
this particular video.

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So what you saw him do

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is he was lifting himself up
and standing on two legs,

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and putting his arms out.

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That's called the bipedal swagger.

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It's a very common posture
in high-ranking males,

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and it's very recognizable
because humans do this kind of stuff.

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(Laughter)

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Humans do this all the time.

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And what I really like
about this particular picture

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is the two old guys to the side.

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This is very chimpanzee.

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In chimpanzees,

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we have usually old males
who are over the hill,

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who cannot be alpha male
themselves anymore,

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but they start playing games
and forming coalitions,

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and behind the backs of others.

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And they become extremely influential,

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and you may actually have old males

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who are more influential
than the alpha male himself.

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Just as an example,

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the three males
that I used to work with most

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at the Dutch zoo long ago, where I worked,

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and the middle male here
is a 17-year-old alpha male.

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The male whom he is grooming
on the side is twice as old,

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and this old male has made him the leader.

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So you can imagine that that old male
has an enormous amount of power,

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because he has made
the alpha male alpha male.

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The male on the right

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is individually the strongest male.

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In captivity, you can test it out,

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and you can know that this male
has no trouble with either one.

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He has only trouble
with the combination of the two.

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And so the coalition formation
that goes on in chimpanzee society

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makes it much more complex than you think.

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It means, for example,

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that the smallest male in a group
can be the alpha male.

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You don't need to be
the biggest and strongest male.

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The smallest male, if he has
the right friends and keeps them happy,

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or he has female support,

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he can be the alpha male.

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So the coalition system
makes everything complex,

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and I'm always waiting here in the US

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for the primaries,
the end of the primaries,

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because that's a moment
where you need to demonstrate unity.

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Now let me first show you
how the unity is shown in chimpanzees.

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What you see here is two males on the left

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who are standing together.

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You also see the big
canine teeth that they have.

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And they're standing together and they
demonstrate to the rest of the group,

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"We are together. We are a unit."

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The males on the right
are walking together in synchrony.

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That's another way of demonstrating
that you are together.

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And so demonstrating unity
is extremely important

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in a coalition system,

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and as I said, in the primaries
always I'm waiting for that moment

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because then you have
two members of the same party

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who have been fighting with each other,

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and they need to come
together at some moment.

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And it leads to very awkward situations.

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People who don't like each other
need to embrace each other

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and stand together,

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and that's absolutely essential
for the unity of the party,

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and if you don't do that,
the party may fall apart.

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And so if it doesn't go well,
like in this particular case --

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(Laughter)

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then the party is in deep doo-doo

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because they have not demonstrated unity.

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So that's a very important part
of the coalition system,

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and that's something that we share
between humans and chimpanzees.

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Now, how do you become an alpha male?

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First of all, you need to be
impressive and intimidating

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and demonstrate your vigor on occasion

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and show that you are very strong,

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and there's all sorts
of ways of doing that.

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But other things that you need to do
is you need to be generous.

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So, for example,
males who go on a campaign

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to dethrone the leader,

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which may take two or three months

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where they're testing
all the coalitions in the group,

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they also become extremely generous.

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They share food very easily with everyone.

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Or they start to tickle
the babies of the females.

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They're normally, male chimpanzees,
not particularly interested in infants,

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but when they are campaigning like that,

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they get very interested in infants
and they tickle them,

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and they try to curry favor
with the females.

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(Laughter)

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So in humans, of course,

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I am always intrigued
by these men who are candidates

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and hold babies up like this.

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This is not particularly
something that babies like --

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(Laughter)

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but since it is a signal
to the rest of the world,

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they need to hold them in the air.

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And I was really intrigued by,

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when we had a female candidate
in the last election,

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the way she held babies
was more like this,

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which is what babies really like.

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But she of course
didn't need to send the message

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that she could hold a baby
without dropping it,

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which was what the man was doing.

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So this is a very common tactic,

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and male chimpanzees,

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they spend a lot of time
currying favor with all sorts of parties

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when they are campaigning.

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Now, what are the privileges and the costs

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of being an alpha male?

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The biggest privilege is females.

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Food is really irrelevant.

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Male chimpanzees
can go a week without food

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if there's a female in estrus
and they're sexually interested in her.

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Food is secondary to sex.

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And so the male chimpanzees --

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and we evolutionary biologists, of course,
we have an explanation for this,

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is that sex leads to reproduction,

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and reproductive success
is the measure of evolution.

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That's how everything evolves.

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And so if males can enhance
their reproductive success

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by being high ranking,

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you get automatically the ambition
to be high ranking in the males.

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So that's the privilege.

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The costs, one cost is of course

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that you need to keep your partners happy.

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So if you come to power
with the support of an old male,

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you need to let that old male
mate with females.

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If you don't do that,
that old male is going to get mad at you,

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and you're going to lose him as a partner.

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So there's a transaction going on.

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If you become alpha male this way,
you need to keep your partners happy.

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And so that's one of the costs.

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The second cost is that
everyone wants your position.

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Alpha male position
is a very important position,

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and everyone wants to take it from you,

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and so you constantly
have to watch your back.

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You have to be extremely vigilant.

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For example, you have to
disrupt the coalitions of others

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and that's what male
chimpanzees do quite a bit.

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Divide and rule strategies, they have.

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And so that's a very stressful situation,
and we actually have data on this.

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The data comes from the field,

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from baboons not chimpanzees in this case,

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where they did fecal samples
on the baboons

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and they analyzed them
for glucocorticoids.

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And what you see here is a graph

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where you see that the lower ranking
the male baboon is,

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the higher is his cortisol level

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in the feces,

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but the alpha male, as you see,

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has just as high a level
as the lowest-ranking males,

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and so you may think that being alpha male
is nice and dandy and is wonderful,

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but it's actually
a very stressful position,

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and we can demonstrate
that physiologically.

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Now, what are the obligations?

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And here, for me,
it gets really interesting,

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and it deviates very much
from your typical image of the alpha male.

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The alpha male
has two sorts of obligations.

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One is to keep the peace in the group.

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We call that the control role,

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to control fights in the group,

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and the second is to be the most empathic,

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the consoler in chief, basically,
of the nation, so to speak.

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So first of all, keeping the peace.

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This is a male who stops a fight
between two females.

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Two females on the left and the right

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have been screaming and yelling
at each other over food,

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because food is very
important for the females,

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and so he stops the fight between them
and stands between them like this.

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And it's very interesting to me
that alpha males, when they do this,

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they become impartial.

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They don't support their mom
or their best buddy.

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No, no, they stop fights,

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and they come up
for the underdog in general.

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And this makes them
extremely popular in the group,

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because they provide security

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for the lowest-ranking
members of the group.

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And so they become impartial,

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which is an unusual condition
for a chimpanzee to be in,

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because they're usually
very fond of their friends and so on,

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and these alpha males
who are good at this,

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they can be very effective
at keeping the peace in the group.

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And the second thing they do
is they show empathy for others.

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Now, I do an enormous amount
of research on empathy,

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and I don't have time to go into it,

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but empathy is nowadays a topic
that we study in rodents and dogs

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and elephants and primates,

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all sorts of animals.

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And what you see here is two bonobos.

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The one in front

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has been beaten up in a fight.

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The one in the back puts
her arms around her and consoles her.

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This is also actually how we measure
empathy in young children,

00:11:55.520 --> 00:11:59.016
by looking at how they respond
to distressed individuals.

00:11:59.040 --> 00:12:01.336
And high-ranking males,
they do a lot of this.

00:12:01.360 --> 00:12:05.776
High-ranking males provide an enormous
amount of comfort in the group,

00:12:05.800 --> 00:12:08.216
and they go to places
where there are earthquakes

00:12:08.240 --> 00:12:10.296
or hurricanes

00:12:10.320 --> 00:12:11.936
and they provide comfort.

00:12:11.960 --> 00:12:14.096
The pope does this.
The presidents do this.

00:12:14.120 --> 00:12:16.456
All the leaders in the world
have to do this job.

00:12:16.480 --> 00:12:18.296
The queen does it and so on.

00:12:18.320 --> 00:12:19.736
They all have to do this job,

00:12:19.760 --> 00:12:23.136
so providing consolation,
and that's a very important task.

00:12:23.160 --> 00:12:25.176
And males who are good at these two,

00:12:25.200 --> 00:12:27.616
keeping the peace and providing comfort,

00:12:27.640 --> 00:12:29.656
they become extremely popular leaders,

00:12:29.680 --> 00:12:32.496
and there's actually
some self-interest involved in it.

00:12:32.520 --> 00:12:34.336
They don't do it just for the group,

00:12:34.360 --> 00:12:36.560
because it also stabilizes their position.

00:12:37.400 --> 00:12:40.216
The more popular
a male becomes as alpha male

00:12:40.240 --> 00:12:44.936
and the more the rest of them
respects them and looks up to them,

00:12:44.960 --> 00:12:46.776
the better their position is defended

00:12:46.800 --> 00:12:49.296
in case it's going to be
challenged by somebody else,

00:12:49.320 --> 00:12:52.616
because then, of course, the whole group
is going to support that male

00:12:52.640 --> 00:12:55.296
because they want to keep
a leader who is good for them.

00:12:55.320 --> 00:12:58.686
So the group is usually very supportive
of males who are good leaders,

00:12:58.700 --> 00:13:00.976
and it's not supportive at all of bullies.

00:13:01.000 --> 00:13:02.816
And when bullies lose their position,

00:13:02.840 --> 00:13:05.040
they may end up
in a very bad situation there.

NOTE Paragraph

00:13:05.840 --> 00:13:08.376
This is data actually
on the consolation behavior.

00:13:08.400 --> 00:13:11.336
This is data on consolation
in chimpanzees,

00:13:11.360 --> 00:13:14.496
and you see for the medium-
and low-ranking individuals,

00:13:14.520 --> 00:13:16.576
the females do more of it than the males.

00:13:16.600 --> 00:13:18.656
This is basically the whole community.

00:13:18.680 --> 00:13:21.576
And this is true for all
the mammal studies on empathy

00:13:21.600 --> 00:13:23.936
is that females
have more of it than males.

00:13:23.960 --> 00:13:25.576
But look at the alpha male.

00:13:25.600 --> 00:13:28.056
The alpha male does
far more than anybody else.

00:13:28.080 --> 00:13:33.160
And so that's the data on alpha males
being the consoler in chief, basically.

NOTE Paragraph

00:13:34.440 --> 00:13:37.360
The last thing I want to say
is something about alpha females.

00:13:38.080 --> 00:13:41.536
This is a picture of Mama,
the alpha female in the Arnhem zoo

00:13:41.560 --> 00:13:42.776
where I used to work,

00:13:42.800 --> 00:13:44.416
who is now all over the internet,

00:13:44.440 --> 00:13:46.656
I think a hundred million
clicks at the moment,

00:13:46.680 --> 00:13:49.176
for a video of her dying at the age of 59,

00:13:49.200 --> 00:13:50.776
which happened last year.

00:13:50.800 --> 00:13:53.656
And Mama was an absolute
centrum of the group.

00:13:53.680 --> 00:13:58.096
So she was not physically capable
of dominating the males.

00:13:58.120 --> 00:14:02.016
She ranked below the males,
but she was the center of the community,

00:14:02.040 --> 00:14:04.216
and if there was big trouble
in the community,

00:14:04.240 --> 00:14:06.536
everyone would end up in the arms of Mama.

00:14:06.560 --> 00:14:08.776
And so she was a very important figure.

00:14:08.800 --> 00:14:11.976
And so I don't want to minimize
the position of alpha females

00:14:12.000 --> 00:14:13.376
in the chimpanzee group.

NOTE Paragraph

00:14:13.400 --> 00:14:16.776
And then we have a species
that is equally close to us

00:14:16.800 --> 00:14:18.256
as the chimpanzee, the bonobo.

00:14:18.280 --> 00:14:22.976
We often forget about the bonobo,
but the bonobos have a matriarchal society

00:14:23.000 --> 00:14:27.536
and the alpha individual
is a female, generally.

00:14:27.560 --> 00:14:30.416
Generally, it's a female
who is at the top of the community,

00:14:30.440 --> 00:14:32.536
and we know much less
about how this is done

00:14:32.560 --> 00:14:35.416
and how they get to that position,
and what they do with it,

00:14:35.440 --> 00:14:38.296
because we know much less
about bonobos in general.

00:14:38.320 --> 00:14:39.656
But I do want to emphasize

00:14:39.680 --> 00:14:43.136
that the alpha in a group
doesn't need to be a male,

00:14:43.160 --> 00:14:46.240
and that actually in one
of our close relatives, it is a female.

NOTE Paragraph

00:14:47.160 --> 00:14:49.616
So the message I want to leave you with

00:14:49.640 --> 00:14:53.920
is that if you are looking
at men in our society

00:14:55.680 --> 00:14:57.176
who are the boss of, let's say,

00:14:57.200 --> 00:15:00.896
a family or a business
or Washington or whatever,

00:15:00.920 --> 00:15:03.296
you call them alpha male,

00:15:03.320 --> 00:15:05.656
you should not insult chimpanzees

00:15:05.680 --> 00:15:07.416
by using the wrong label.

NOTE Paragraph

00:15:07.440 --> 00:15:08.656
(Laughter)

NOTE Paragraph

00:15:08.680 --> 00:15:11.160
You should not call a bully an alpha male.

00:15:11.960 --> 00:15:15.576
Someone who is big and strong
and intimidates and insults everyone

00:15:15.600 --> 00:15:17.216
is not necessarily an alpha male.

00:15:17.240 --> 00:15:19.296
An alpha male has all sorts of qualities,

00:15:19.320 --> 00:15:22.296
and I have seen bully
alpha males in chimpanzees,

00:15:22.320 --> 00:15:23.576
they do occur,

00:15:23.600 --> 00:15:26.336
but most of the ones that we have

00:15:26.360 --> 00:15:28.296
have leadership capacities

00:15:28.320 --> 00:15:30.336
and are integrated in their community,

00:15:30.360 --> 00:15:32.136
and, like Amos at the end,

00:15:32.160 --> 00:15:33.936
they are loved and respected,

00:15:33.960 --> 00:15:36.696
and so it's a very different situation
than you may think.

NOTE Paragraph

00:15:36.720 --> 00:15:37.976
And I thank you.

NOTE Paragraph

00:15:38.000 --> 00:15:41.720
(Applause)