I’m tapping deep in to my memory with this post, so if anyone that reads this blog is better versed in U.S. history please forgive me. I’ve titled the post “Domino Theory” after the pervasive Cold War thought that if countries fell to communism, surrounding countries would also fall (like dominoes) shortly thereafter. I’m pretty sure I learned about this in my freshman year of high school (a long time ago), so I forget all the little details (who came up with it, blah, blah, blah). It was the reason we went to Vietnam, and (in my personal opinion) is the reason we continue to intervene in conflicts around the globe (substitute communism for fascist regime, terrorism, radical Islamists, etc.)
Enough geopolitical banter. Last week I mentioned that Dikos had taken over a unit. Now, like dominoes, two more leader males  have fallen in the past week. Quasi (named for his hunchback) overthrew Whale (a male twice his size) and Maylet (my number one studied bachelor) took over an unknown unit of seven females and two unit males (presumably the ex-leader and the ex-ex leader) all by himself. Quasi was a former member of the same all-male group as Dikos, and likewise observed how his friend commenced his reproductive career. Did that influence his decision to try and tackle Whale? Maylet was the dominant bachelor in his group, and also the most social. Yet, none of his bachelor buddies entered the unit with him. Did he truly ‘go it alone’ and defeat two males by himself? Or did his bachelor friends help him out, only to be excluded from the unit by the new leader/their former groupmate? As I didn’t directly observe either of these takeovers (they likely occurred on the sleeping cliffs the night prior), I cannot tell. What I do know is that the bachelors are ‘graduating’ at an alarming rate, and I need to start adding more animals to my study to keep up.
Interesting. I’d start looking at competing hypotheses: is this a domino effect, or is it just takeover season? Ultimately you’d have to generate the predictions of each hypothesis and see which, if either, better fit your data. On the one hand, generating and testing predictions of a domino theory may be difficult since it’d be hard to say (let alone quantify) the extent to which one take-over influenced another. On the other hand, a takeover season theory would require years of observations.
Either way, keep your notes open for my impending take-over. -s. I mean, if I were one of these bachelors, I’d just takeover unit after unit, until I’d created a reproductive skew on par with elephant seals. But then, I’m not a gelada.