The surprising science of alpha males

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.