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Generous Leaders and Selfish Underdogs: Pro-Sociality in Despotic Macaques

March 17th, 2010

Actively granting food to a companion is called pro-social behavior and is considered to be part of altruism. Recent findings show that some non-human primates behave pro-socially. However, pro-social behavior is not expected in despotic species, since the steep dominance hierarchy will hamper pro-sociality. We show that some despotic long-tailed macaques do grant others access to food. Moreover, their dominance hierarchy determines pro-social behavior in an unexpected way: highranking individuals grant, while low-ranking individuals withhold their partner access to food. Surprisingly, pro-social behavior is not used by subordinates to obtain benefits from dominants, but by dominants to emphasize their dominance position. Hence, Machiavellian macaques rule not through ''fear above love'', but through ''be feared when needed and loved when possible''.

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist

Funding: This research was supported by an Evolution and Behaviour grant from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO, www.nwo.nl). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Contacts:
Elisabeth Sterck
Utrecht University
E-mail: E.H.M.Sterck@uu.nl

Jen Laloup
Public Library of Science
jlaloup@plos.org
415-624-1220

Citation: : Massen JJM, van den Berg LM, Spruijt BM, Sterck EHM (2010) Generous Leaders and Selfish Underdogs: Pro-Sociality in Despotic Macaques. PLoS ONE 5(3): e9734. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0009734

Provided by Public Library of Science

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