A Baboon’s Life

These high-ranking tusslers seldom bother with a puny adolescent newcomer. But with a former number 1, an aging superstar toppled from power, they will roundly and repeatedly rub his nose in his subordinacy.

An aged male baboon basks in the sun

When I examined the few males who had transferred into my troop in their old age, they were utterly subordinate, sitting in the cellar of the hierarchy. But they were largely ignored. The aged males who had spent their prime in the troop, however, were subject to more than twice as many dominance interactions as the males who had transferred in.

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