> Keith Henson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: <snippage> > Of course, battered wife is an arrested or > recirculating (trapped) version > of the capture-bonding sequence. Capture-bonding in > the human "wild state" > was a one time event, applied to captives for about > the time hazing is today. > > There is a bit of a precursor to this trait in > chimpanzees. Males are > fairly brutal at first to females they take out of > the group into remote > areas during "consortships." I would not say female > chimpanzees bond with > males who take them on consortships, but they do > quit trying to escape after a few beatings.
Also in baboons, where males regularly smack the females about. An intriguing paper reports on how this behavior was greatly diminished in a baboon troop whose alpha males were killed off by tuberculosis; now males tend to fight others of their own rank, and indulge in more mutual grooming: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/13/science/13BABO.html?ex=1085284800&en=2cc8aafc0e63c9b1&ei=5070 (our login/password: brinl/brinl) http://makeashorterlink.com/?T27513D58 "Sometimes it takes the great Dustbuster of fate to clear the room of bullies and bad habits. Freak cyclones helped destroy Kublai Khan's brutal Mongolian empire, for example, while the Black Death of the 14th century capsized the medieval theocracy and gave the Renaissance a chance to shine. Among a troop of savanna baboons in Kenya, a terrible outbreak of tuberculosis 20 years ago selectively killed off the biggest, nastiest and most despotic males, setting the stage for a social and behavioral transformation unlike any seen in this notoriously truculent primate... ...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... ...The researchers were able to compare the behavior and physiology of the contemporary Forest Troop primates to two control groups: a similar-size baboon congregation living nearby, called the Talek Troop, and the Forest Troop itself from 1979 through 1982, the era that might be called Before Alpha Die-off, or B.A.D... ...But in the baboon study, the culture being conveyed is less a specific behavior or skill than a global code of conduct. "You can more accurately describe it as the social ethos of group," said Dr. Andrew Whiten, a professor of evolutionary and developmental psychology at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland who has studied chimpanzee culture. "It's an attitude that's being transmitted..." ...Jerkiness or worse certainly seems to be a job description for ordinary male baboons. The average young male, after wheedling his way into a new troop at around age 7, spends his prime years seeking to fang his way up the hierarchy; and once he's gained some status, he devotes many a leisure hour to whimsical displays of power at scant personal cost. He harasses and attacks females, which weigh half his hundred pounds and lack his thumb-thick canines, or he terrorizes the low-ranking males he knows cannot retaliate. Dr. Barbara Smuts, a primatologist at the University of Michigan who wrote the 1985 book "Sex and Friendship in Baboons," said that the females in the troop she studied received a serious bite from a male annually, maybe losing a strip of flesh or part of an ear in the process. As they age and lose their strength, however, males may calm down and adopt a new approach to group living, affiliating with females so devotedly that they keep their reproductive opportunities going even as their ranking in the male hierarchy plunges. For their part, female baboons, which live up to 25 years — compared with the male's 18 — inherit their rank in the gynocracy from their mothers and so spend less time fighting for dominance. They do, however, readily battle females from outside the fold, for they, not the males, are the keepers of turf and dynasty... ...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..." Reduction in stress hormones was also seen in those Russian foxes who were selected for 'tameness,' and in ~36 generations did indeed become tamer, with more puppy-like behavior and even changes in coat color. Debbi Knock Out The Holnists Maru __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Domains – Claim yours for only $14.70/year http://smallbusiness.promotions.yahoo.com/offer
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