Context Dependency
Dominance and its organisation can be highy variable depending on the context or individuals involved.
In European badgers, dominance relationships may vary with time as individuals age, gain or lose social status, or change their reproductive condition. Dominance may also vary across space in territorial animals as territory owners are often dominant over all others in their own territory but submissive elsewhere, or dependent on the resource. Even with these factors held constant, perfect dominance hierarchies are rarely found in groups of any great size, at least in the wild. Dominance hierarchies may be more frequently found in captivity, since hierarchies tend to be induced by focused resources such as limited supplies of food supplied in a fixed place.
Dominance hierarchies in small herds of domestic horses are generally linear hierarchies whereas in large herds the relationships are triangular.
Dominance hierarchies can be formed at a very early age. Domestic piglets are highly precocious and within minutes of being born, or sometimes seconds, will attempt to suckle. The piglets are born with sharp teeth and fight to develop a teat order as the anterior teats produce a greater quantity of milk. Once established, this teat order remains stable with each piglet tending to feed from a particular teat or group of teats.
Dominance–subordination relationships can vary markedly between breeds of the same species. Studies on Merinos and Border Leicesters revealed an almost linear hierarchy in the Merinos but a less rigid structure in the Border Leicesters when a competitive feeding situation was created..
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