According to Laurence Gesquiere, lead author of the study, for baboons being at the top of the social hierarchy has numerous advantages: better access to food resources and the priority to reproduce with more fertile females to ensure more abundant offspring. However, the study, which is now published inScience, reveals that alpha males are more stressed than immediately inferior males (beta males), they fight more than other males, and they have to keep an eye on fertile females to prevent them from reproducing with other males. “These two behaviors require ahuge energy expenditure by alpha males. However, the two categories of males receive the same rate of challenges to their status and the same rates of delousing and grooming, an activity that is compared to human massage, and during which the stress of the baboon decreases “, Gesquiere points out. .
To arrive at these results, the researchers studied 125 adult males from five social groups of wild baboons in the Amboseli Basin (Kenya), and measured hormone levels for nine years. Thus they verified that, in addition to high levels ofglucocorticoids-stress hormone-, alpha males have high concentrations oftestosterone, an important hormone for its reproduction ?, says the expert. Glucocorticoids and testosterone suppress the immune defenses of the primate body.
The findings have implications for the study of social hierarchies and the impact of social domination on health and well-being, a topic of interest among researchers studying human and other animal populations. “Baboons are not only genetically related to humans, but, like humans, they live in very complex societies,” says Gesquiere. Although it is difficult to extrapolate the results of this study to humans, numerous studies have shown the importance of the socioeconomic status of people in health.
