It is evident that the dominance order confers positive advantages on many species. Were we to discover a similar arrangement in human societies, we might be inclined to believe that these advantages are so powerful that the system could only be the product of rational cal culation and the voluntary acceptance of that product by intelligent and foresighted people. And yet, here we find a similar system in the social groups of animals to which we ascribe no capacity for calcu lation, and certainly no ability to form contractual agreements. In the light of such observations, there is no alternative but to recon sider the foundations of human society and to question the extent to which they are in fact rationally derived,
(4) Age and sex in animal societies
As already pointed out, juveniles are usually at the bottom of animal rank orders, and very young individuals are outside them. Char acteristically in primates, they are the object of defence; Hall and
DeVore have noted that a baboon troop moves in an orderly way with | females and infants at the centre of the troop and the males at the
outside, except for the more dominant males who will be close to the centre,
As far as group fitness is concerned, this arrangement is clearly
advantageous to species where each sex is about equally represented in a social group. The younger males are less important to the inclusive fitness of the society, since one male could fertilize many females
(particularly in the promiscuous society of, say, baboon troops). The very young infants and the females, however, would be much more crucial to group survival, since they represent the future generation of the society and continuing contribution to it. In free-ranging primates, it is broadly true that infants are protected, adolescents guard and
explore, dominant males lead and keep order, females raise infants and keep order among them, and more senior males serve as useful and exper ienced members of the troop, while posing no threat to the dominant in dividual .
Again, the parallel with human society is striking. We also put a high value on the protection of women and children, "Women and child ren first" in times of danger is such a widespread conviction that any system of ethics has to take account of it. Our human: adolescents, particularly adolescent males, are widely recognized to be rebellious, even reckless, and it is they who we send (or who volunteer) to fight our wars, just as in other primates they occupy a position at the bot tom of the dominance order, and are to be found at the edge of a troop where they are in most danger.
Maintenance of the society (l) Cooperative defence
Defence is probably one of the most important factors that has led to the evolution of group-dwelling, Konrad Lorenz in his celebrated book On Aggression notes that the simplest social aggregation is the anonymous flock, but that even in these gatherings, defensive mechanisms are often impressive. Starlings, for example, fly in close formation when a hawk threatens above them; a diving hawk would be in great dan ger of personal damage if he tried to attack one, because he would al most certainly hit others. Similarly some predatory fish find it dif ficult to catch school fish because of their rapid movement in all di rections, A dog in a rabbit warren (unless trained to follow only one rabbit) suffers the same problem and is rarely successful,
In some social insects, defence depends not only on "behaviour hut on caste. The termite-hi 11 is guarded "by a caste of soldiers, much
larger than other individuals and equipped with large serrated mandi"bles. The term 'caste* is, according to Manning, "well suited to describe the division of labour within insect societies. It implies a rigid, lim-
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ited role... largely determined by one's upbringing." . Defence in many insect societies relies on this division of role. On occasion, other cooperative ventures are possible only because of the morphological dif-
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ferences, and cooperation based on behavioural distinctions are common. Furthermore, the defense of social groups can be regarded as highly al truistic in many animal societies. The reputation of bees as an ill- natured species hinges on their willingness, despite loss of individual life, to sting large animals near the hive.
Defensive formations can be developed more highly in those spec ies where individual recognition and dominance relationships are pos sible. Allee in The Social Life of Animals notes that baboon troops are often ordered in the distinctive way outlined by Hall and De"Vore, and that when a warning cry reaches the ear of the dominant member of the troop, he acts swiftly to assemble the other dominant males, arrange the males on the outside and the females with their young inside a de-
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fensive ring, As already mentioned, the success of such formations is a function on the differences in behaviour shown by individuals ac cording to age, sex, and other factors. Were it not for those factors, defence would be difficult,
(2) Territoriality
A 'territory' is an area of space, whether earth or water or air, which an animal or group of animals defends as an exclusive preserve. The importance of the territoriality trait in animal societies is hotly disputed by ethologists and psychologists, many of the latter insisting that territoriality is learned rather than acquired genetically, and disputing the inevitability of territoriality and the aggression which
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sustains it. Whatever the origin of the phenomenon, however, there are a number of fiercely territorial species; and whether inevitable or not, the history of mankind must have convinced us of the predominance
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