Louisville (Kentucky), Jan 29: Scientists used to think power in animals played out in a tidy and simple way. Nature is a dog-eat-dog place. Rams butt heads in a thunderous spectacle, and the winning male gets to mate with a female. Bigger, stronger, meaner animals beat up smaller, weaker, more timid ones, and then walk, fly or swim away with the prize. All that’s certainly going on in the wild. But the natural world, it turns out, is so much […]
Life can be a struggle for power – not just for people but for nonhuman animals, too. An animal behaviorist explains how this quest can be more Shakespearean drama than boxing match.
Lee Alan Dugatkin is an animal behaviorist, evolutionary biologist, and historian of science at the University of Louisville who has authored more than 150 papers. His newest book is “Power in the Wild: The Subtle and Not-So-Subtle Ways Animals Strive for Control over Others.” Along with Lyudmila Trut, he co-authored “How to Tame a Fox (and Build a Dog)” in 2017.
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