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Luit never came out of the anesthesia. He paid dearly for having stood up to two other males, frustrating them by his steep ascent. Those two had been plotting against him in order to take back the power they had lost. The shocking way they did so opened my eyes to how deadly seriously chimpanzees take their politics.
Two-against-one maneuvering is what lends chimpanzee power struggles both their richness and their danger. Coalitions are key. No male can rule by himself, at least not for long, because the group as a whole can overthrow anybody. Chimpanzees are so clever about banding together that a leader needs allies to fortify his position as well as the greater community’s acceptance. Staying on top is a balancing act between forcefully asserting dominance, keeping supporters happy, and avoiding mass revolt. If this sounds familiar, it’s because human politics works exactly the same.
Before Luit’s death, the Arnhem colony was ruled jointly by Nikkie, a young upstart, and Yeroen, an over-the-hill conniver. Barely adult at seventeen, Nikkie was a brawny character with a dopey expression. He was very determined, but not the sharpest knife in the drawer. He was supported by Yeroen, who was physically not up to the task of being a leader anymore, yet who wielded enormous influence behind the scenes. Yeroen had a habit of watching disputes unfold from a distance, stepping in only when emotions were flaring to calmly support one side or the other, thus forcing everybody to pay attention to his decisions. Yeroen shrewdly exploited the rivalries among younger and stronger males.
Without going into the complex history of this group, it was clear that Yeroen hated Luit, who had wrested power from him years before. Luit had defeated Yeroen in a struggle that had taken three hot summer months of daily tensions involving the entire colony. The next year, Yeroen had gotten even by helping Nikkie dethrone Luit. Ever since, Nikkie had been the alpha male with Yeroen as his right-hand man. The two became inseparable. Luit was unafraid of either one of them alone. In one-on-one encounters in the night cages, Luit dominated every other male in the colony, taking away their food or chasing them around. No single one of them could possibly have kept him in his place.
This meant that Yeroen and Nikkie ruled as a team, and only as a team. They did so for four long years. But their coalition eventually began to unravel, and as is not uncommon among men, the divisive issue was sex. Being the kingmaker, Yeroen had enjoyed extraordinary sexual privileges. Nikkie would not let any other males get near the most attractive females, but for Yeroen he had always made an exception. This was part of the deal: Nikkie had the power, and Yeroen got a slice of the sexual pie. This happy arrangement ended only when Nikkie tried to renegotiate its terms. In the four years of his rule, he had grown increasingly self-confident. Had he forgotten who had helped him get to the top? When the young leader began to throw his weight around, interfering with the sexual adventures not only of other males but also of Yeroen himself, things got ugly.
Infighting within the ruling coalition went on for months, until one day Yeroen and Nikkie failed to reconcile after a spat. With Nikkie following him around, screaming and begging for their customary embrace, the old fox finally walked away without looking back. He’d had it. Luit filled the power vacuum overnight. The most magnificent chimpanzee male I have known, both in body and spirit, quickly grew in stature as the alpha male. Luit was popular with females, a mighty arbiter of disputes, protector of the downtrodden, and effective at disrupting bonding among rivals in the divide-and-rule tactic typical of both chimp and man. As soon as Luit saw other males together he would either join them or perform a charging display to disband them.
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Frans de Waal (Our Inner Ape: A Leading Primatologist Explains Why We Are Who We Are)