Who Beats Whom: A Look into Social Dominance

You are taking a walk through a park and you see two dogs playing. But wait, are they really playing? When you look again, it seems more like they are actually fighting. Then, when you see them again a few minutes later, you notice one dog fleeing the scene with his tail between his legs. Even though you didn’t realize it at the time, you just saw a dominance encounter. There was a conflict, most likely over food, and one individual came out over the other. While this may be simple, fleeting dominance between two individuals that may never see each other again, it is the basis for any dominance system.

While dominance systems start out quite simple with only a few individuals, they can quickly become very complex. Take, for example, elephants on the plains of Africa. Within an area, there can be many, many family units, or groups of related mothers and offspring, each of which can be made of around ten individuals. Each of these family units has their own dominance structure. Then, on top of that, there is a dominance structure between the family units (Moss 34). For example, family unit A is dominant over family unit B, and family unit B is dominant over family unit C. So, what started as a few dominance encounters between two or three individuals can become a complex society made up of hundreds of animals.

As I was looking into case studies of dominance systems, such as that of the elephants, I also had the opportunity to observe dominance in animals in my area. Recently, I went out to a local rescue for horses, Orphan Acres, Inc. with a girl that usually volunteers there on weekends named Aléna. There I observed a few different pastures that each had their own dominance systems. The one that I observed the most was the blind pen, in which all of the horses are blind or mostly blind, with the exception of two miniature horses and a female who acts as a guide for the others. In this enclosure, the two miniature horses are actually the dominant individuals, probably because they can see while the others can’t. There were a few occasions where I actually saw one of the miniature horses nip at the flanks of a full-sized horse. It was also quite obvious who the lowest-ranking individual in the group is. When brought apples, the other horses came running and this horse hung back. Aléna had to ultimately approach this individual to give her an apple. She also told me that she had even seen the dominant individuals take apples from this individual by nudging her head out of the way.

There are many different dominance systems. No two species are exactly the same. Even in the two examples above, there were extreme differences. This is what I hope to look at next: the comparison of different dominance systems.

~Rachel C.

Works Cited

Moss, Cynthia. Elephant Memories. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2000. Print.

Perriguey-Krings, Aléna.  Personal Interview. 13 December 2014.