Pigeons have stable, transitive hierarchies of flight leadership, and they have stable pecking order hierarchies, and these hierarchies do not correlate.
one of the things you can do with the power to give instructions is to instruct others to give you more goodies.
It occurs to me that leading a flight is an unusual instruction-giving power, in that it comes with almost zero opportunities to divert resources in your own direction. Choosing where to fly and when to land affects food options, but it does not affect your food options relative to your flight-mates. Most leadership jobs give many more opportunities to turn the position into zero-sum personal benefits.
I suspect this is not a coincidence. Can anyone think of a case where the pecking order and the leadership hierarchy are uncorrelated in a situation where the leadership is exploitable for pecking opportunities?
It occurs to me that leading a flight is an unusual instruction-giving power, in that it comes with almost zero opportunities to divert resources in your own direction. Choosing where to fly and when to land affects food options, but it does not affect your food options relative to your flight-mates. Most leadership jobs give many more opportunities to turn the position into zero-sum personal benefits.
I suspect this is not a coincidence. Can anyone think of a case where the pecking order and the leadership hierarchy are uncorrelated in a situation where the leadership is exploitable for pecking opportunities?