Practice Random Acts of Aggression and Senseless Acts of Intimidation: The Logic of Status Contests in Social Groups

Events like this occur every day in cercopithecine primate groups. What is striking about these attacks is that they are sudden, unprovoked, and unpredictable. These kinds of interactions reinforce existing dominance relationships, but do not directly affect access to valuable resources. Here, I suggest that randomly timed attacks on randomly selected subordinates are part of an evolved strategy that has been favored by natural selection because it maximizes the negative impact on the victim and minimizes the cost to the aggressor.