The surprising science of alpha males

In this fascinating look at the "alpha male," primatologist Frans de Waal explores the privileges and costs of power while drawing surprising parallels between how humans and primates choose their leaders. His research reveals some of the unexpected capacities of alpha males -- generosity, empathy, even peacekeeping -- and sheds light on the power struggles of human politicians. "Someone who is big and strong and intimidates and insults everyone is not necessarily an alpha male," de Waal says.

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 the way we do with pillows
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 end so 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.

But I think it is used
in a mischaracterization.

It's used in a very superficial way

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

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

The term itself goes back
actually much further.

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

and basically the definition
is very simple.

The highest ranking male
is the alpha male.

The highest ranking female
is the alpha female.

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

not more than that, there's only one.

And I will explain how that goes.

So first, the body language.

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

but one is walking upright,
has his hair up,

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

The other male is pant-grunting to him,

is being submissive to him
and bowing for him,

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

in order to have a stable relationship.

I'll show you a video from the field.

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

and you will see how that goes.

The male is approaching,

she grunts at him.

(Chimpanzee grunts)

He has all his hair up

and he displays.

I'm actually standing far too close.

A chimpanzee is far stronger than I am,

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

So what you saw him do

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

and putting his arms out.

That's called the bipedal swagger.

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

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

(Laughter)

Humans do this all the time.

And what I really like
about this particular picture

is the two old guys to the side.

This is very chimpanzee.

In chimpanzees,

we have usually old males
who are over the hill,

who cannot be alpha male
themselves anymore,

but they start playing games
and forming coalitions,

and behind the backs of others.

And they become extremely influential,

and you may actually have old males

who are more influential
than the alpha male himself.

Just as an example,

the three males
that I used to work with most

at the Dutch zoo long ago, where I worked,

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

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

and this old male has made him the leader.

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

because he has made
the alpha male alpha male.

The male on the right

is individually the strongest male.

In captivity, you can test it out,

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

He has only trouble
with the combination of the two.

And so the coalition formation
that goes on in chimpanzee society

makes it much more complex than you think.

It means, for example,

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

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

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

or he has female support,

he can be the alpha male.

So the coalition system
makes everything complex,

and I'm always waiting here in the US

for the primaries,
the end of the primaries,

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

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

What you see here is two males on the left

who are standing together.

You also see the big
canine teeth that they have.

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

"We are together. We are a unit."

The males on the right
are walking together in synchrony.

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

And so demonstrating unity
is extremely important

in a coalition system,

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

because then you have
two members of the same party

who have been fighting with each other,

and they need to come
together at some moment.

And it leads to very awkward situations.

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

and stand together,

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

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

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

(Laughter)

then the party is in deep doo-doo

because they have not demonstrated unity.

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

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

Now, how do you become an alpha male?

First of all, you need to be
impressive and intimidating

and demonstrate your vigor on occasion

and show that you are very strong,

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

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

So, for example,
males who go on a campaign

to dethrone the leader,

which may take two or three months

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

they also become extremely generous.

They share food very easily with everyone.

Or they start to tickle
the babies of the females.

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

but when they are campaigning like that,

they get very interested in infants
and they tickle them,

and they try to curry favor
with the females.

(Laughter)

So in humans, of course,

I am always intrigued
by these men who are candidates

and hold babies up like this.

This is not particularly
something that babies like --

(Laughter)

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

they need to hold them in the air.

And I was really intrigued by,

when we had a female candidate
in the last election,

the way she held babies
was more like this,

which is what babies really like.

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

that she could hold a baby
without dropping it,

which was what the man was doing.

So this is a very common tactic,

and male chimpanzees,

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

when they are campaigning.

Now, what are the privileges and the costs

of being an alpha male?

The biggest privilege is females.

Food is really irrelevant.

Male chimpanzees
can go a week without food

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

Food is secondary to sex.

And so the male chimpanzees --

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

is that sex leads to reproduction,

and reproductive success
is the measure of evolution.

That's how everything evolves.

And so if males can enhance
their reproductive success

by being high ranking,

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

So that's the privilege.

The costs, one cost is of course

that you need to keep your partners happy.

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

you need to let that old male
mate with females.

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

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

So there's a transaction going on.

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

And so that's one of the costs.

The second cost is that
everyone wants your position.

Alpha male position
is a very important position,

and everyone wants to take it from you,

and so you constantly
have to watch your back.

You have to be extremely vigilant.

For example, you have to
disrupt the coalitions of others

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

Divide and rule strategies, they have.

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

The data comes from the field,

from baboons not chimpanzees in this case,

where they did fecal samples
on the baboons

and they analyzed them
for glucocorticoids.

And what you see here is a graph

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

the higher is his cortisol level

in the feces,

but the alpha male, as you see,

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

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

but it's actually
a very stressful position,

and we can demonstrate
that physiologically.

Now, what are the obligations?

And here, for me,
it gets really interesting,

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

The alpha male
has two sorts of obligations.

One is to keep the peace in the group.

We call that the control role,

to control fights in the group,

and the second is to be the most empathic,

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

So first of all, keeping the peace.

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

Two females on the left and the right

have been screaming and yelling
at each other over food,

because food is very
important for the females,

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

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

they become impartial.

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

No, no, they stop fights,

and they come up
for the underdog in general.

And this makes them
extremely popular in the group,

because they provide security

for the lowest-ranking
members of the group.

And so they become impartial,

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

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

and these alpha males
who are good at this,

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

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

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

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

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

and elephants and primates,

all sorts of animals.

And what you see here is two bonobos.

The one in front

has been beaten up in a fight.

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

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

by looking at how they respond
to distressed individuals.

And high-ranking males,
they do a lot of this.

High-ranking males provide an enormous
amount of comfort in the group,

and they go to places
where there are earthquakes

or hurricanes

and they provide comfort.

The pope does this.
The presidents do this.

All the leaders in the world
have to do this job.

The queen does it and so on.

They all have to do this job,

so providing consolation,
and that's a very important task.

And males who are good at these two,

keeping the peace and providing comfort,

they become extremely popular leaders,

and there's actually
some self-interest involved in it.

They don't do it just for the group,

because it also stabilizes their position.

The more popular
a male becomes as alpha male

and the more the rest of them
respects them and looks up to them,

the better their position is defended

in case it's going to be
challenged by somebody else,

because then, of course, the whole group
is going to support that male

because they want to keep
a leader who is good for them.

So the group is usually very supportive
of males who are good leaders,

and it's not supportive at all of bullies.

And when bullies lose their position,

they may end up
in a very bad situation there.

This is data actually
on the consolation behavior.

This is data on consolation
in chimpanzees,

and you see for the medium-
and low-ranking individuals,

the females do more of it than the males.

This is basically the whole community.

And this is true for all
the mammal studies on empathy

is that females
have more of it than males.

But look at the alpha male.

The alpha male does
far more than anybody else.

And so that's the data on alpha males
being the consoler in chief, basically.

The last thing I want to say
is something about alpha females.

This is a picture of Mama,
the alpha female in the Arnhem zoo

where I used to work,

who is now all over the internet,

I think a hundred million
clicks at the moment,

for a video of her dying at the age of 59,

which happened last year.

And Mama was an absolute
centrum of the group.

So she was not physically capable
of dominating the males.

She ranked below the males,
but she was the center of the community,

and if there was big trouble
in the community,

everyone would end up in the arms of Mama.

And so she was a very important figure.

And so I don't want to minimize
the position of alpha females

in the chimpanzee group.

And then we have a species
that is equally close to us

as the chimpanzee, the bonobo.

We often forget about the bonobo,
but the bonobos have a matriarchal society

and the alpha individual
is a female, generally.

Generally, it's a female
who is at the top of the community,

and we know much less
about how this is done

and how they get to that position,
and what they do with it,

because we know much less
about bonobos in general.

But I do want to emphasize

that the alpha in a group
doesn't need to be a male,

and that actually in one
of our close relatives, it is a female.

So the message I want to leave you with

is that if you are looking
at men in our society

who are the boss of, let's say,

a family or a business
or Washington or whatever,

you call them alpha male,

you should not insult chimpanzees

by using the wrong label.

(Laughter)

You should not call a bully an alpha male.

Someone who is big and strong
and intimidates and insults everyone

is not necessarily an alpha male.

An alpha male has all sorts of qualities,

and I have seen bully
alpha males in chimpanzees,

they do occur,

but most of the ones that we have

have leadership capacities

and are integrated in their community,

and, like Amos at the end,

they are loved and respected,

and so it's a very different situation
than you may think.

And I thank you.

(Applause)