The “alpha male” may be just a myth, according to a new study

Forget everything you know about alpha males and the widespread idea that, in a group, male individuals are necessarily those who have the upper hand over their peers. A study published July 7 in the journal PNAS shows that, among primates, males do not always dominate, far from it.

To understand the mechanisms governing relationships between females and males in primates, the researchers spent five years collecting and analyzing data from 253 populations representing 121 species. They paid particular attention to conflicts and carefully noted who confronted whom, and especially who won. They obtained this type of information for 151 populations from 84 species.

"What they discovered debunks long-standing stereotypes," reports Science Focus, the BBC's science magazine. Intersexual confrontations, that is, conflicts between females and males, are very common among primates. The study found that they are even more common than previously documented, accounting for more than half of all conflicts. More importantly, their outcomes vary considerably from one species to another.

Cases of strict dominance (when more than 90% of fights are won) of female primates have been known since the 1960s, but they had never been quantified, so some thought they were only exceptions. In this new study, the researchers observed strict male dominance in 25 of the 151 populations, while strict female dominance was identified in 20 populations. This leaves 106 populations for which there is no clearly identifiable sexual “bias.”

In other words, strict male dominance was observed in only 17% of the populations studied. “We didn't expect this to be the majority because we were already well aware of the [scientific] literature on the subject, but we didn't think it would be below 20%,” Élise Huchard, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Montpellier and lead author of the study, told BBC Science Focus .

“The study also challenges the idea that power always lies with brute force,” reports the science magazine . The researchers specifically analyzed contexts in which one gender tends to dominate. For example, the British site details:

“In many primate societies, females establish dominance not through force but by controlling reproduction.”

This work confirms that there is no single model to explain power and domination relationships. "While the researchers remain cautious in their extrapolations to humans, their results highlight the astonishing variability of gender roles among our primate cousins," insists BBC Science Focus.

The authors of the study conclude: "Our study highlights the fact that male-female dominance relationships display strong variations. It also identifies traits associated with the emergence of male or female dominance in primate history and evolution, which could improve our understanding of the origin of gender roles in early human societies."