4 ms·
>I however enjoyed turning the bullies into the bullied by isolating them for a few days and reintroducing them. That reminds me of the story of a baboon tribe
by ranie93 8y ago
>I however enjoyed turning the bullies into the bullied by isolating them for a few days and reintroducing them.
That reminds me of the story of a baboon tribe Robert Sapolsky studied:
"The males [...] had contracted bovine tuberculosis, and most died between 1983 and 1986. Their deaths drastically changed the gender composition of the troop, more than doubling the ratio of females to males, and by 1986 troop behavior had changed considerably as well; males were significantly less aggressive."
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC387823/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC387823/
I wonder if a similar phenomenon would occur within a flock such as yours (or within chickens altogether)
- belorn 8y agoThe critical point of that story was that it was not random which baboon died. The garbage dump area which had the infected food "belonged" to an other baboon squad, so it was only the most aggressive males that dared to invade in order to eat there. Naturally the troop overall got less aggressive when the top 50% most aggressive males died. What was surprising to Sapolsky and scientific notable was that the lower aggression continued even when the troop returned to the original gender composition several years later, including new males which had no genetic relatives with the troop. The theory is that a culture of low aggression was introduced by the eradication of the aggressive males, and new males simply adapted to that culture when they joined.
- hopler 8y agoIf they made both genetic and environmental/cultural arguments for the same effect, they had no idea why and were making up just so stories