Measurement
The first published systematic study of dominance in animals was by Thorleif Schjelderup-Ebbe who described in his Ph.D. dissertation of 1921, the social behaviour and priority of access to food by hens. This led to the colloquial term "pecking order" describing the hierarchical system of social organization in chickens, although it is sometimes loosely applied to other animals.
Dominance can be measured by the number of times that individuals defer to one another in social interactions, by the length of time that resources are preferentially accessed, by the number/intensity of threats given or other agonistic (competitive) behaviours. The measurement of dominance is only applicable within the group it is measured since it is a function of the invidual members of the group.
Read more about this topic: Dominance (ethology)
Famous quotes containing the word measurement:
“That’s the great danger of sectarian opinions, they always accept the formulas of past events as useful for the measurement of future events and they never are, if you have high standards of accuracy.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)