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Biologists Robert Sapolsky and Lisa Share have followed a troop of wild baboons in Kenya for over 20 years, starting in 1978. Sapolsky and Share called them “The Garbage Dump Troop” because they got much of their food from a garbage pit at a tourist lodge. But not every baboon was allowed to eat from the pit in the early 1980s: The aggressive, high status males in the troop refused to allow lower status males, or any females, to eat the garbage. Between 1983 and 1986, infected meat from the dump led to the deaths of 46% of the adult males in the troop. The biggest and meanest males died off. As in other baboon troops studied, before they died, these top-ranking males routinely bit, bullied, and chased males of similar and lower status, and occasionally directed their aggression at females.
But when the top ranking males died-off in the mid-1980s, aggression by the (new) top baboons dropped dramatically, with most aggression occurring between baboons of similar rank, and little of it directed toward lower-status males, and none at all directed at females. Troop members also spent a larger percentage of the time grooming, sat closer together than in the past, and hormone samples indicated that the lowest status males experienced less stress than underlings in other baboon troops. Most interestingly, these effects persisted at least through the late 1990’s, well after all the original “kinder” males had died-off. Not only that, when adolescent males who grew up in other troops joined the “Garbage Dump Troop,” they too engaged in less aggressive behavior than in other baboon troops. As Sapolsky put it “We don’t understand the mechanism of transmission… but the jerky new guys are obviously learning: We don’t do things like that around here.” So, at least by baboon standards, the garbage dump troop developed and enforced what I would call a “no ahole rule.”
I am not suggesting that you get rid of all the alpha males in your organization, as tempting as that may be at times. The lesson from the baboons is that when the social distance between higher and lower status mammals in a group are reduced, and steps are taken to keep the distance smaller, higher status members are less likely to act like jerks. Human leaders can use this lesson to avoid turning into mean, selfish, and insensitive jerks too. Despite all the trappings, some leaders do remain attuned to how people around them are really feeling, to what their employees really believe about how the organization is ran, and to what customers really think about their company’s products and services. As “The Garbage Dump Troop” teaches us, the key thing these leaders do is to take potent, and constant, steps that dampen rather amplify the power differences between themselves and others (both inside and outside the company).
originally posted by: skunkape23
Monkeys are socialist commie unionists.
They need a good freedom bombing.
originally posted by: Dimithae
a reply to: gosseyn
Okay so how do we get congress to eat infected meat?
second line
originally posted by: hutch622
a reply to: gosseyn
I found it interesting that the top 5 countries on the mental illness chart were all english speaking , basically all the english speaking countries . Complex language maybe .Sorry nothing to do with communist monkeys .
originally posted by: Benevolent Heretic
a reply to: gosseyn
Very interesting! S&F! It doesn't surprise me at all. Down the toilet drain we go.
Can we get links to the information? I don't see those charts on the www.equalitytrust.org.uk... website...
The monkeys know each other, they have been taken from the same group, and they also know the taste of grapes, they have eaten both cucumber and grapes prior to the experiment and 90% of the time when presented with both available foods they choose grapes, they only accept cucumber when only cucumber is available. So no, it is not "perceived value", they just prefer the taste of grapes and they can recognize it visually. For them, grapes represent a better reward than cucumber.
originally posted by: VekTorVik
The communist monkeys are actually a demonstration on perceived fairness, if you think about it. A grape, a cucumber...what gives one value over the other aside from the perception of value.
Off the cuff, and watching my children argue between each other, I would agree that perhaps a sense of fairness, or equality, is deeply ingrained in the psyche. This then leads me to wonder if my children are communists, and is communism also genetic?!?!? As an American, this is why I firmly believe in the freedom spanking, to undo their socialist tendencies and teach them that by force alone will they get more cookies than their siblings. Not because one thing is fair and another is not.
I also wonder if inequality leads to health and social issues more because of the impact higher wage earners have on the cost of goods and services, not because of the actual difference in income levels.