Apr 02 2009
Dominating Genes
For males, this is an all-or-nothing game; rank determines who will sow his seed far and wide and who will not sow his seed at all.
- Franz de Waal (1)
In the animal kingdom, sex, dominance/submission and status are intertwined. As it sometimes is at kinky Internet sites. Primates of many kinds show signs of the strong relationship between hierarchical behavior and sexual behavior. In humans, we sometimes (appropriately) view the link as unfortunate and undesirable. But among chimps we tend not to place the same value judgments. For instance, in Jane Goodall’s reports on female chimpanzees entering into their estrus period at Gombe and consequently experiencing high-status males soliciting “copulation with a brief threatening courtship display”(2), she did not add, “those dirty bastards.”
Male chimps will also engage in a dominance behavior described as the “symbolic mounting of females.” (3) There is no penetration. These acts have little to nothing to do with procreation, everything to do with status. Submissive males, too, will engage in acts labeled “presenting” to other males. These are not males with homosexual tendencies, but individuals signaling that they pose no threat to higher status males. You might say they are attempting to blend with the non-threatening crowd.
In many a primate group — chimpanzee, baboon, macaque – low status means lesser reproductive success.(4) And it seems that even in egalitarian human societies, there is at least a vestigial link, as revealed by recent research. A study reported in the Journal of Personality suggested, “[T]hat status striving may be important for reproductive success even in modern humans when the relevant traits are measured at the right level – not as educational diplomas or high-status occupations, but as having a dominant personality.”(5) Dominant behavior, if not rank, apparently continues to play a role in the sexual lives of our kind.
How does dominance and rank translate into reproductive success? A primatologist specializing in field studies of bonobos – the supposedly most egalitarian of our primate cousins – puts it this way:
In many primates that form multi-male groups, higher-ranking males have the advantage of obtaining priority of access to estrous females and, hence, a higher chance of mating than do lower-ranking ones, although such mating success is not always associated with reproductive success. (6)
Observations of baboon troops show that the alpha male makes the “vast majority” of matings, especially when females are ovulating. (7) The females, for their part, are not passive targets of male reproductive zealotry. Field studies of talapoin monkeys, for example, have documented that females “present” more to dominant males. They invite sex from more higher ranking individuals. (8)
Bringing this discussion back to the topic of religion, it is fairly obvious that the Bible god did not engage in actual sex. Although gods in other cultures might impregnate human females, and there is that one Biblical tale of the impregnation by an angel proxy of a Mary that led to a divine offspring, the Bible god doesn’t physically reproduce. So how and why would this supernatural alpha show concern for who bears children by whom? All children are children of the great, unbiased god, aren’t they?
A wide-eyed read of the Bible will reveal a god very concerned with reproductive issues. And why wouldn’t he be? To the primate mind, reproductive success and paternity are hugely important. And what is the Bible god but an invisible alpha?
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(1) de Waal, F. Our Inner Ape: A Leading Primatologist Explains Why We Are Who We Are, New York, Riverhead Books, 2005, p.48
(2) Power, M. The Egalitarians: Human and Chimpanzee, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1991, p. 79
(3) Bourne, H., The Ape People, Putnam, New York, 1971.
(4) Wright, R., The Moral Animal: Evolutionary Psychology and Everyday Life, Vintage, NY, 1995, p. 241
(5) “Personality Influences Reproductive Success”
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090325132149.htm
(6) Kano, T., “Male rank order and copulation rate in a unit-group of bonobos at Wamba, Zaïre,” in McGrew, W. C. , Marchant, L. F. & Nishida, T., Great Ape Societies, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 1996, p. 136
(7) Cheney, D. L., & Seyfarth, R. M. Baboon Metaphysics: The Evolution of a Social Mind, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2007, p.56
(8) Keverne, E. B., Eberhart, J. A., & Meller, R. E., “Plasma Testosterone, Sexual and Aggressive Behavior in Social Groups of Talapoin Monkeys,” in Steklis, H. D. & Kling, A. S. (eds.), Hormones, Drugs & Social Behavior in Primates, New York, SP Medical & Scientific Books, 1983, p. 45
