bbc.co.uk navigation

Male western lowland gorilla reaching for soil to eat

Hierarchical

Hierarchical animals have what is known colloquially as a 'pecking order'. Animals at the top of the hierarchy aggressively dominate those lower down the ranks in order to retain privileged access to resources such as food, mates or a safe places to sleep. Males are often likely to dominate a pack, but there are some exceptions, as in spotted hyenas where females outrank males. In other cases there may be an alpha female in addition to an alpha male, as in wolves where she is the only one that will bear pups.

Watch video clips from past programmes (31 clips)

In order to see this content you need to have an up-to-date version of Flash installed and Javascript turned on.

View all 31 video clips

Animals with this behaviour

Mammals

Birds

Reptiles

Cartilaginous fish

About

A dominance hierarchy (in humans: social hierarchy) is the organization of individuals in a group that occurs when competition for resources leads to aggression. Schjelderup-Ebbe, who studied the often-cited example of the pecking order in chickens, found that such social structures lead to more stable flocks with reduced aggression among individuals.

Dominance hierarchies can be despotic or linear. In a despotic hierarchy, only one individual is dominant, while the others are all equally submissive. In a linear hierarchy, for example, in the above cited pecking order of chickens, each individual dominates all individuals below him and not those above him.

Dominance hierarchies occur in most social animal species that normally live in groups, including primates. Dominance hierarchies have been extensively studied in fish, birds, and mammals. Dominance hierarchies can be simple linear structures, which often arise from the physical differences among individuals in a group in relation to their access to resources. They are also influenced by the complex social interactions among individuals in the group.

Read more at Wikipedia

This entry is from Wikipedia, the user-contributed encyclopedia. If you find the content in the 'About' section factually incorrect, defamatory or highly offensive you can edit this article at Wikipedia. For more information on our use of Wikipedia please read our FAQ.

Behaviours

Other Social behaviour behaviours

Video collections

Take a trip through the natural world with our themed collections of video clips from the natural history archive.

  • This is Planet Earth This is Planet Earth

    With Planet Earth Live hitting our screens, what better way to marvel at the wonders of nature than watching a fantastic collection of video highlights from the original Planet Earth series.

  • Garden birds Garden birds

    Nestcam close-ups, expert identification guides and specialist wildlife cameras give a privileged view of a very British obsession: garden birds.

More …

BBC © 2012 The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Read more.

This page is best viewed in an up-to-date web browser with style sheets (CSS) enabled. While you will be able to view the content of this page in your current browser, you will not be able to get the full visual experience. Please consider upgrading your browser software or enabling style sheets (CSS) if you are able to do so.