they have missing hands or feet, or may be like our omega male, Tinka, who has injured
hands and a constant itchy skin complaint.
Since the work of de Waal (1982) published under the title ‘Chimpanzee Politics’, we
now know much about the relationships between males in a chimpanzee community.
Coalitions, scheming for dominance, buttering up would-be allies, bluffing and finally
all-out attack are some of the ingredients of male–male relationships. Status is a near-
total preoccupation for males. And yet, in a community such as the one at Sonso,
these males are in some cases related to one another, can be tremendously friendly and
mutual with one another, and move around together in seemingly perfect harmony.
When they turn aggressive the results can be devastating. Small fights, often over access
to females, are easily contained though they may sound as if someone is being killed.
But when real trouble breaks out there seem to be no limits to the aggressiveness of
chimpanzees.
Jane Goodall was the first to describe really terrible fighting. Some of the males
and females of the Kasakela community at Gombe had split off from their fellows
and moved to the south to form a new community called the Kahama community. Not
longafterwards the Kasakela males, acting together, sought them out one by one and
savagely killed them. They killed a female too. They seemed to be avenging the crime
of the breakaway individuals who had set up an exclusive territory to the south
(Goodall 1986).
The ranks of the males in the Sonso community, calculated on the basis of their
agonistic dominance plus conferred respect, are shown in Table 6.3. Within the commun-
ity, the rank order between the higher ranking (‘political’) males seems to be enough
to control male–male relationships most of the time.^52 Lower ranking males defer to
higher ranking males, groom them and give them the pant-grunt greeting vocalization
that signifies subordinacy (Goodall 1986; Hayaki 1990; Takahata 1990a) or ‘conferred
respect’ (Newton-Fisher 1997). Not all the males are ‘political’, however; as Newton-
Fisher (1997, 1999d) has shown, some males prefer to keep out of the political arena
and forgo status-seeking for the quiet life. Plotting the status of males according to pant-
grunts received against rank determined from agonistic interactions (see Fig. 6.6), we
see the expected positive correlation, but the 15 males fall into three groups. In the ‘top’
group are the alpha and beta males, DN and VN. They formed an alliance pair and were
very close during the study period (from October 1994 to December 1995). Although
DN was dominant and could displace VN, VN was never heard to give DN pant-grunts:
it appears their relationship was too close for that. (All other males did give DN pant-
grunts.) The remaining males fell into two groups. The ‘bottom’ group consisted of four
males, all very subordinate, two of whom were adolescents (AY and ZF), the third a
young male (ZT), the fourth was TK, the omega male. The middle group consisted of
nine males of intermediate rank, the top three of whom (BK, MG and MA) were in
muted but not vigorous competition with one another as seen by their relatively high
124 Social behaviour and relationships
(^52) Not all the time. In Chapter 8 I describe a fatal attack on one of the Sonso males by his fellows. This is
highly unusual, however.