Measuring the Dynamics of Mammalian Societies
353
ition may go into such definitions; for example, fox cubs may launch quite
ferocious attacks on their mother when food is under dispute, but the lack of
reaction and effective supplanting of the mother at the food would not be
interpreted by many researchers as a sign that the cubs are meaningfully dominant to the mother.
Dominance is often assumed to depend on body size, as a proxy for combative prowess, and this may generally be true (Lindstedt et al. 1986; Hansson
1992). However, this may sometimes be too simple an interpretation (Barbault 1988). For example, Berdoy et al. (1994) showed that among male Norway rats (Rattus norvegicus) age (itself broadly correlated with weight) was a
better predictor of dominance than was weight. Age of male is also an important predictor of mate choice by female spotted hyenas (Crocuta crocuta; Hofer
and East 1993). Advanced age, obviously a necessary corollary of good survival, may also be a better measure of fitness than current musclepower.
There is a tendency to assume too readily that all societies are arranged in a
straightforward dominance hierarchy. Our own work with badgers revealed
some of the complexities of elucidating and interpreting the dominance concept. We were interested in feeding interactions because the pattern of food
availability and its manner of exploitation are believed to be central to badger
social organization (Woodroffe and Macdonald 1995b). We investigated feeding dominance by establishing artificial food stations in the field (Stewart
1997). This experimental approach was deemed necessary because although
dominance interactions may be key components of a social system, they may
also be too rarely expressed to investigate with statistical rigor in a purely natural context. If a longer period is spent accumulating data, the requirement of
stationarity may be breached and dominance relations may change during the
observation period. Artificial provisioning experiments allow wild social
groups with settled relationships to serve as subjects while improving the number, quality, and rate of observations. There are clear perils to the approach,
however; ethically we had to ensure that injurious levels of aggression were not
provoked (Cuthill 1991), and scientifically the general relevance of the experimental protocol had to be verified in an unmanipulated context (Wrangham
1974; Dunbar 1988). For this reason we maintained surveillance and control
over the experiments using a live infrared video link and pursued further
related observations in different social contexts.
We found that when badgers were presented with a single food source
requiring contest competition for access, there was little direct evidence of
default yielding to certain challengers and hence strict dominance relations: a
feeding badger generally escalated aggression to some degree against any chal-
353
ition may go into such definitions; for example, fox cubs may launch quite
ferocious attacks on their mother when food is under dispute, but the lack of
reaction and effective supplanting of the mother at the food would not be
interpreted by many researchers as a sign that the cubs are meaningfully dominant to the mother.
Dominance is often assumed to depend on body size, as a proxy for combative prowess, and this may generally be true (Lindstedt et al. 1986; Hansson
1992). However, this may sometimes be too simple an interpretation (Barbault 1988). For example, Berdoy et al. (1994) showed that among male Norway rats (Rattus norvegicus) age (itself broadly correlated with weight) was a
better predictor of dominance than was weight. Age of male is also an important predictor of mate choice by female spotted hyenas (Crocuta crocuta; Hofer
and East 1993). Advanced age, obviously a necessary corollary of good survival, may also be a better measure of fitness than current musclepower.
There is a tendency to assume too readily that all societies are arranged in a
straightforward dominance hierarchy. Our own work with badgers revealed
some of the complexities of elucidating and interpreting the dominance concept. We were interested in feeding interactions because the pattern of food
availability and its manner of exploitation are believed to be central to badger
social organization (Woodroffe and Macdonald 1995b). We investigated feeding dominance by establishing artificial food stations in the field (Stewart
1997). This experimental approach was deemed necessary because although
dominance interactions may be key components of a social system, they may
also be too rarely expressed to investigate with statistical rigor in a purely natural context. If a longer period is spent accumulating data, the requirement of
stationarity may be breached and dominance relations may change during the
observation period. Artificial provisioning experiments allow wild social
groups with settled relationships to serve as subjects while improving the number, quality, and rate of observations. There are clear perils to the approach,
however; ethically we had to ensure that injurious levels of aggression were not
provoked (Cuthill 1991), and scientifically the general relevance of the experimental protocol had to be verified in an unmanipulated context (Wrangham
1974; Dunbar 1988). For this reason we maintained surveillance and control
over the experiments using a live infrared video link and pursued further
related observations in different social contexts.
We found that when badgers were presented with a single food source
requiring contest competition for access, there was little direct evidence of
default yielding to certain challengers and hence strict dominance relations: a
feeding badger generally escalated aggression to some degree against any chal-