<!-- bryant-content-generator:start --> # The socially acceptable story is that families... > The socially acceptable story is that families protect their own, and the story is repeated most loudly by the people it has just failed. The record says something colder. When researchers examined 47 years of female-led killings at Gombe, three facts recurred with the regularity of a law: one or more attackers outranked the victim, coalitions were common, and the victims lacked kin support. The powerful female did not choose the newborn of a mother with sisters standing nearby. She chose the mother who was alone. Across the monkey world the same accounting runs the whole of social life: a female macaque inherits her rank from her mother's coalition, holds it only while her relatives will fight for it, and drops the day they stop; a male chimpanzee with brothers and allies rises, and a male without them is the one found at the edge of the range; a female baboon with strong bonds lives longer and her infants survive, and the one whose bonds have thinned is the one the group lets the leopard have. Kin support is the oldest insurance policy in the primate order, and like every insurance policy it has always been priced. {{In the primate record the attacker never chooses the one with sisters. The attacker chooses the one standing alone, and then everyone asks why the sisters were not there.}} **Source:** [[books/Chimping Out|Chimping Out]] ## Share on Social Media ``` “The socially acceptable story is that families protect their own, and the story is repeated most loudly by the people it has just failed. The record says something colder. When researchers examined 47 years of female-led killings at Gombe, three facts recurred with the regularity of a law: one or more attackers outranked the victim, coalitions were common, and the victims lacked kin support. The powerful female did not choose the newborn of a mother with sisters standing nearby. She chose the mother who was alone. Across the monkey world the same accounting runs the whole of social life: a female macaque inherits her rank from her mother's coalition, holds it only while her relatives will fight for it, and drops the day they stop; a male chimpanzee with brothers and allies rises, and a male without them is the one found at the edge of the range; a female baboon with strong bonds lives longer and her infants survive, and the one whose bonds have thinned is the one the group lets the leopard have. Kin support is the oldest insurance policy in the primate order, and like every insurance policy it has always been priced. In the primate record the attacker never chooses the one with sisters. The attacker chooses the one standing alone, and then everyone asks why the sisters were not there.” — Bryant McGill https://bryantmcgill.com/passages/passages-socially-acceptable-story-everyone-asks-sisters ``` <!-- bryant-content-generator:end -->