For chimpanzees, our closest living relatives, a change in the alpha male can be a fairly brutal affair. “So in human societies, especially liberal democracies, we have this idea of a leader that is ...

An international research team led by the University of Konstanz and Oxford Brookes University concludes that gentle touch is not only good for mental health, but also for the evolution of cooperation ...

It's easy to assume all animals have a neat dividing line between the sexes because the differences in appearance between males and females can be so striking. But the more scientists learn about ...

Animal social behaviour is always much more complex and nuanced than we initially imagine, even for those of us who have studied it for decades. Despite this complexity, pervading every aspect of ...

Scientists used to think power in animals played out in a tidy and simple way. Nature is a dog-eat-dog place. Rams butt heads in a thunderous spectacle, and the winning male gets to mate with a female ...

I've long been interested in the concept of power among nonhuman animals (animals). All too often, when humans act violently, they're written off as "behaving like animals," but from my own and others ...

Power in nonhuman animals used to play out in such a tidy and simple way. Bigger, stronger animals beat up smaller, weaker ones. The vanquished slunk away, and the victor claimed the prize. Or so we ...