> I wrote: >... And I bet I've > missed some lively (not to say acrimonious <grin>) > discussions; with all the political and economic goings-on, > there's been plenty of grist for the mill. <snip>
Ah, the sound and smell of baboons howling while tossing fecal matter about -- I refer to the Meltdown thread, of course, which I am just starting to wade through. Good to see that, as before, name-calling and posturing are the 'counters' to facts, perceptions and opinions ... hmmm, rather like current political ads on the tube. BTW, even baboons have the capacity to transform their interactions in less than one generation: there was a troop whose alpha males all died, and when the betas took over, astonishingly they *did not* become swaggering bullys who beat up the females and juveniles, but started a kinder and gentler society with more grooming and non-aggressive interactions. And incoming young males are 'indoctrinated' into this mode, which the researcher said took about 6 months. I recall reading somewhere about this before, but here is a PBS piece on stress that incorporated the data: http://www.pbs.org/stress/ A blog that summarizes the baboon part: http://www.pbs.org/remotelyconnected/2008/09/stress_portrait_of_a_killer.html ...One troop of baboons, we learn, was able to pull it off - to change the fundamental nature of their society and reduce stress all around. When the troop's alpha males all died - victims, tragically, of tuberculosis, which they got from tainted meat in the dumpster of a nearby nature lodge - the remaining males did something amazing: they were nice. More to the point, they weren't aggressive toward subordinates; suddenly, being a subordinate didn't feel worse than being dominant. The troop as a whole became more harmonious; as rank became less related to quality of life, the baboons who were lower on the totem pole were able, simply put, to chill out... Here is a NYT article on the subject: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C03E6DB1E38F930A25757C0A9629C8B63 ...In a study appearing today in the journal PloS Biology (online at www.plosbiology.org), researchers describe the drastic temperamental and tonal shift that occurred in a troop of 62 baboons when its most belligerent members vanished from the scene. The victims were all dominant adult males that had been strong and snarly enough to fight with a neighboring baboon troop over the spoils at a tourist lodge garbage dump, and were exposed there to meat tainted with bovine tuberculosis, which soon killed them. Left behind in the troop, designated the Forest Troop, were the 50 percent of males that had been too subordinate to try dump brawling, as well as all the females and their young. With that change in demographics came a cultural swing toward pacifism, a relaxing of the usually parlous baboon hierarchy, and a willingness to use affection and mutual grooming rather than threats, swipes and bites to foster a patriotic spirit. Remarkably, the Forest Troop has maintained its genial style over two decades, even though the male survivors of the epidemic have since died or disappeared and been replaced by males from the outside. (As is the case for most primates, baboon females spend their lives in their natal home, while the males leave at puberty to seek their fortunes elsewhere.) The persistence of communal comity suggests that the resident baboons must somehow be instructing the immigrants in the unusual customs of the tribe... ...''We don't yet understand the mechanism of transmittal,'' said Dr. Robert M. Sapolsky, a professor of biology and neurology at Stanford, ''but the jerky new guys are obviously learning, 'We don't do things like that around here.' '' ... ...The new-fashioned Forest Troop is no United Nations, or even the average frat house. Its citizens remain highly aggressive and argumentative, and the males still obsess over hierarchy. ''We're talking about baboons here,'' said Dr. Sapolsky. What most distinguishes this congregation from others is that the males resist taking out their bad moods on females and underlings. When a dominant male wants to pick a fight, he finds someone his own size and rank. As a result, a greater percentage of male-male conflicts in the Forest Troop occur between closely ranked individuals than is seen in the control populations, where the bullies seek easier pickings. Moreover, Forest Troop males of all ranks spend more time grooming and being groomed, and just generally huddling close to troop mates, than do their counterpart males in the study... Here is a summary of that baboon aggression taken to infanticide: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/episodes/murder-in-the-troop/a-little-help-from-their-friends/2051/ Debbi who hopes to get her car back from the transmission repair shop very soon _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
