Alpha Pair Strategies in Alien Civilizations

Many animals here on Earth use alpha pair strategies to control reproduction in times and locations where scarcity prevails. Primates, canines, birds, and others have been observed using it, and there are probably many others as well. In short, the strategy involves the formation of a group of one species, usually incorporating both sexes, which hunt or forage together. There is an accepted strategy for selecting an alpha pair, who are the dominant animals of the group. They get the first food and are the only ones or the preferred ones to breed. Others in the group may serve as assistants, or protectors or nurturers of the alpha pair’s children. There may be a second tier, the betas, who get some of the privileges that the alphas get.

This is not the same as territorial domination, but it may co-exist with it. With territorial domination, a pair, or a single sex of a pair, may take actions to exclude others of the same sex and species from hunting or foraging within an area controlled by the alpha. With the hunting region divided into territories, some animals of the species will get none, which is the equivalent of them not achieving alpha status and having reduced chances for breeding. The alpha pair strategy and territorial domination achieve the same goal over the long term: animals who can achieve dominance feed better and breed more. Successive generations will emphasize the traits involved in the competition, rather than traits necessarily concerned with survival in the environment.

Alien civilizations face the threat of idiocracy, or some other type of dysgenics, once they pass the industrial revolution and affluence takes hold. With a negative correlation between reproduction rate and any positive attribute, the average of that attribute will decline with time. The period between when affluence hits at least part of the population and the time when genetics is taken control of after the genetics grand transformation is when the population is vulnerable to this effect. It may be that no response is given, even that no notice of the problem exists in some particular alien civilization, or it may be that they debate what strategy should be followed to abate it.

The only government reproduction policy that has been effected here on Earth is the one-child policy by China. For the period 1979 until 2015, only one child was allowed for many women, and forcible involuntary contraception implantation or sterilization was used to enforce the rule. There were numbers of exceptions, allowing typically two children, in cases where a child was handicapped, or even if the first child was female. This policy had debatable results, as reproduction rate was already declining before the policy, and it has declined in some other areas which did not have such a policy. Most likely, it exaggerated an already strong trend toward lower reproduction rates. This type of policy is ostensibly neutral toward dysgenics, in that it allows the same dysgenic effects to occur as would occur without them, but perhaps reduces their effects by disallowing large families.

To control this problem, an alien planet might have a similar policy. But can alternatives exist? Is it possible that an alien population might be descended from pre-intelligent animals that employed the alpha pair strategy? Humankind’s exact ancestors are long extinct, but related animals, the higher primates, have strategies of this kind, or something similar, such as the bonobo’s alpha female strategy. When and why might it be lost, and would the same transition necessarily occur in alien populations on similar planets?

Reproduction rates on the gene or chromosome level are determined by two factors, survival of the individual carrying those genes to reproductive maturity, and then reproduction of the individual. The transition to a different reproductive strategy might occur with the transition from an individual hunter-gatherer culture to a clan hunting culture. Hunting large prey which requires the cooperation of a group of hunters means that there must be some tendency toward equality of activity or sharing of the rewards of the hunt. This sociological trend is referred to as the ‘big man’ strategy of food-sharing, in which status, and therefore leadership, is given to the person who arranges for others to eat. This means that survival to a degree is now decoupled from individual capabilities, and these capabilities are sorted out for reproduction in a different way. Individual hunters reproduced because they were good at hunting and therefore found mates. This might be correlated with strength or balance or tool-using ability. Group hunters all share in the spoils of the hunt, and leadership of the group is given to the individual who organizes the hunt the best. These qualities are mostly mental, although obviously good physical characteristics are needed. Thus, intelligence is supported if there is a breeding strategy that rewards the hunt leaders.

If the group is large enough, it cannot reproduce sufficiently if an alpha pair strategy is followed. Population will decline and hunting of large prey will become more difficult with a smaller group. However, if there is a multilevel hierarchy, and reproductive rights only go to the alpha and betas, then reproduction might be adequate to maintain the population of the group and allow it to continue to preserve itself and its strategy. This policy is vulnerable to the departure of the non-selected, either in pairs or in groups, in a schism of the group. Polygyny or polyandry would tend to make the formation of the schism less likely, as would the provision of food from successful hunting. If hunting is difficult, staying for the food might outweigh leaving for reproduction opportunities.

From what limited pre-historical resources we have, it appears that humankind shifted to a monogamy strategy early on, and did not follow any type of alpha pair strategy. This left them vulnerable to dysgenics unless there was not a negative correlation with capability, but positive. The positive correlation solves the problem completely. So the question to ask about is what leads to a negative correlation of productive capability with reproduction? To see if any of these strategies might be profitably used by an alien civilization requires some more thinking about the timing and causes behind the changes in human society.