Power in the Wild

"Hermit crabs might not be the first example that comes to mind when thinking about power in animal relationships, but they are representative of the costs, benefits, assessment, and struggles that animal behaviorist Lee Dugatkin explains in Power in the Wild. Besides learning that researchers can evict all crabs from their shells by tickling their abdomens with paintbrushes, readers discover that attacker crabs can assess both the quality of shells and the ability of competitors to hold onto them- and both attacker and attacked make decisions about how much energy to expend holding onto a good shell. If the attacker looks tough, a target might just give up and flee. That the models for these behaviors mirror game theory for nuclear deterrence is all the more interesting. Dugatkin makes clear that this is not a book about what non-human animal power dynamics can teach us about ourselves, but it is an overview of power in the animal world generally- from the costs of pursuing power, to the role of gender (including a description of a species of fish that changes gender depending on its rank), to new findings on observer animals that watch and assess greater community power relationships without participating in power struggles themselves"--