    34

    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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