An Experience of the establishment of a Dominance Hierarchy in Rats

Read, Understand, Extrapolate

Power Thread :

An experiment was performed on rats. To study their aptitude to swim, a researcher of the laboratory of behavioral biology of the faculty of Nancy, Didier Desor, gathered six in a cage whose single issue ended on a swimming pool which they had to cross to reach a food distributor

It was quickly found that the six rats were not going for food by swimming together. Roles appeared that they had thus distributed: two exploited swimmers, two non-swimmers exploiters, an independent swimmer and a non-swimmer painkiller.

The two exploited went for food by swimming underwater. When they came back to the cage, the two exploiters hit them and threw their heads under the water until they dropped the food

It was only after feeding the two exploiters that the two exploited subjects could afford to consume their own kibble. The exploiters never swam, they just beat the swimmers to be fed.

The autonomous was a swimmer strong enough to bring back his food and pass the exploiters to feed on his own toil. The scapegoat, finally, was unable to swim and unable to scare the exploited, so he was picking up the crumbs that fell in battle.

The same structure-two exploited, two exploiters, an autonomous and a painkiller-was found in the twenty cages where the experiment was renewed.

To better understand this mechanism of hierarchy, Didier Desor placed six exploiters together. They fought all night. In the morning, they had recreated the same roles. Two exploiters, two exploited, one suffering pain, one autonomous.

And we still got the same results by bringing together six exploited in the same cage, six autonomous, or six suffering pain.

Then the experiment was reproduced with a larger cage containing two hundred individuals. They fought all night, the next day there were three crucified rats whose others had torn off the skin.