angelophile | The Primate Police: Monkey Cops Keep Groups in Line

New research reveals that monkey cops help keep social groups in line. Not having guns or nightsticks, they leverage their group seniority, craft intimidating reputations and count on good voter turnout.

Take the primate police out of a group, as researchers did, and the rest get more violent and aggressive. Interaction between cliques drops significantly.

"It's not just that violence goes up, but a whole range of behavior involving a whole range of individuals suddenly disappears," said David Krakauer of the Santa Fe Institute. "It's like saying you take police out of human society, and all of a sudden people stop going to the opera, or something more important."

The study, detailed in today's issue of the journal Nature, also uncovered a complex monkey "voting" system for appointing the peacekeepers.

http://www.livescience.com/animalworld/060126_monkey_cops.html