Well, I have known many alpha males in my life,
chimpanzee alpha males,
and I'm going to talk about what an alpha male is,
because I think we can all learn a lot from our close relatives
where we have alpha males.
And as an example, I want to give you Amos, a male that I knew
who was a young male and he was alpha male,
he was very popular,
but he got sick
and he lost his position because, you know, chimpanzee males
they can spot from a mile away if you are weak
and they went for him,
and he lost his position, and then he got sicker and sicker
until at some point
we had to isolate him.
The group lived on a grassy island,
and we had to isolate him in a cage,
but we cracked open the cage so that the rest of the chimps
still had access to him.
And what happened was most touching.
Other chimps would bring food to him,
they would bring wood wool to him,
which is this thing that they use to sleep in and build nests out of,
and females would put the wood wool behind his back.
He was leaning heavily against the wall,
and look, the way we do with pillows and to patients in a hospital,
they were putting that stuff behind his back.
And I thought, this is the way to go for an alpha male.
He was loved and respected, and everyone was taking care of him,
and this is not always how it goes,
because some males don't answer well when they lose their position.
So Amos was an example of a male who was liked as a leader,
and I think the term alpha male,
if you look it up on the internet,
you will find all these business books that tell you how to be an alpha male,
and what they mean is how to beat up others
and beat them over the head and let them know that you are boss
and don't mess with me and so on.
And basically an alpha male for them is a bully.
And I really don't like that kind of description,
because I am actually partly responsible for the term "alpha male"
because I wrote this book "Chimpanzee Politics,"
which was recommended by Newt Gingrich
to freshmen congressmen.
I don't know what good it did, but he recommended that book to them,
and after that the term "alpha male" became very popular.