No, Male Dominance Among Primates Is Not Universal Either
On the myths of primate patriarchy and how they feed into the inequality between humans
Nearly a hundred years ago, a shipment of ninety-seven hamadryas baboons arrived at the London Zoo to populate a new open-air exhibit dubbed Monkey Hill.
They were supposed to be all male — it was believed they would appeal to the public more than the smaller and less gaudy females — however, by accident or mistake, the shipment included six (unlucky) females.
And the result was, well, a bloodbath. The males immediately went to war over access to the few females, and even when the females were dead, the males continued to fight over their bodies. The violence was oftentimes so intense the zookeepers had to wait days to retrieve the carcasses.
Within two years, almost half of the baboons were dead.
Now, you might not be familiar with the Monkey Hill story — which, unfortunately, didn’t stop there as zookeepers kept adding baboons to the enclosure — but you likely are with the flawed conclusions drawn from it. Solly Zuckerman (later Lord Zuckerman), a scientist hired by the London Zoo to observe the baboons, later on argued that the experiment proved the universality of male dominance among primates.
