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IMAGE: 'It turns out that pronghorn -- a speedy North American ungulate prized for its graceful gait -- can be bullies.'
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Credit: Tom Koerner/USFWS
Humans and animals alike constantly size up one another. In the workplace, a new employee quickly learns which coworkers are the most respected -- and therefore hold more power. Big brothers boss around little brothers. In nature, a dominant male chimpanzee fights off would-be intruders. Even fish and octopi interact within social hierarchies.
These pecking orders have been studied within the behavioral ecology world for almost 100 years. How individuals interact can affect access to food and mates -- even survival -- and insights into those behaviors can lead to better management of threatened and endangered populations. But few studies have explored what the animals that live within these dominance hierarchies actually know about each other. The more animals know about each other, the more they may be able to optimize their aggression. New research, published March 3 in