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u pright, arrogant posture and a self-confident stride.   He swaggered
straight to the queen of the bazaar clan and mounted her.  Knowing
that with their old leader dead she and her companions had just slid
down the pecking order, the formerly snooty matron gritted her teeth
but gave in.  Her face was screwed up with conflict.  But even as he
copulated with her, the new master of the high-class neighborhood
looked around him with an expression that seemed to radiate a casual
contempt.
The troop of langurs from the hills, the group that had always
been treated by its bazaar-dwelling cousins as second class, had moved
taken a giant stride up the ladder of status.  The luxurious real estate of
the town market now belonged to them.  The troop from the ritzy
neighborhood at the center of the town, on the other hand, had taken a
dive toward the bottom.66
Human superorganisms also have their pecking orders.  The
Soviet Union and the United States struggled for generations over who
was number one.  Tanzania and Chad are painfully aware of their
position on the bottom of the heap.  They belong to a bloc whose
pecking order position is outlined in its very name: the third world.
There's good reason for a group to want to climb as high in the
pecking order as it can.  The superorganism at the summit has the best
territory, the best food, the best of everything.  That's why some ant
species go to war.  The ant colonies that win increase their territory.
They build insect empires.  The larger the size of an ant society's
territory, the better each ant citizen is fed and the bigger each worker is
able to grow.  When it comes to sex, the winning colony scores an extra
bonus.  It is able to produce more winged, sexually active queens and
males when the mating season comes around.  As a result, even its
chances to start fresh offshoots is greater than those of its less
successful neighbors.67
There are other good reasons for wanting your group to reach
the top of the pecking order.  Remember Jane Goodall's tribe of
chimps?  After many years, the clan split in half.  One gang stuck with
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