In zoology, the dominant male (or male alpha) is the individual in a group of animals that the others follow, obey or submit to.
The dominant male has the priority to eat or mate. In some species, the dominant male even has the exclusivity of females and is the only male that can mate. The dominant male may also, in some species have highly ritualized prerogatives such as the right to lead a procession.
The dominant male in the species of capuchin monkeys is the favorite of all the females of his species. But only the strongest females have a relationship with the dominant male. They must earn it! I reason a little like that… I maybe have genes of Capuchin!
The status of alpha male is related to physical force but sometimes other more complex criteria. For example, for the bonobo or the chimpanzee, the dominant male does not always credit his status to his only physical strength but also to indirect methods such as the ability to create “political” alliances. Like humans (Artistote has also written that man is a political animal)!
This may bother some people to use indifferently “dominant male” in a sentence that speaks of a man and in another that speaks of the bonobo. Basically, what these people hate is that we can consider the man as an animal.
Yet this is the case (we are social animals according to certain, moral animals according to others) and if science agrees to say that there are dominant males in a lot of species and especially in our cousins the monkeys, then why not for humans?
The debate that would consist of asking if the Human is so wonderful that he deserves a capital H to designate his species, and should therefore escape the study zoologists, seems to me not really constructive and a proof of bad faith.
“Dominant male” is indeed a term of zoology. But the man is an animal like another one, so we can apply a term of zoology to Humans.
Extract from : Evopsy and Seduction