Sep 15, 2026 · 26 min · 17 segments
Forest Troop is a new story I wrote for Adventure Journal about a trip I took to remote British Columbia with a group of female pro surfers. The editor, Stephen Casimiro, kindly let me read the story…
Kyle ThiermannHost
After leaving his birth troop at around age seven, a male will find a new one and spend his prime years trying to fang his way up the hierarchy.
Once he's gained a modicum of status, he devotes his days to terrorizing lower-ranking males and females, who only grow to half his size.
In the mid-1980s, Dr. Robert Sapolsky, a primatologist living in Kenya, documented an unprecedented cultural shift when he noticed that the alpha males of a baboon population suddenly vanished.
The alphas had come upon a garbage dump near a tourist lodge, and they defended their spoils furiously from lower-ranking males and females, who were relegated to leaves, seeds, and insects on the forest floor.
One day, in the East African heat, the alphas were exposed to tainted meat at the dump, infecting them with bovine tuberculosis.
The males were among those who had been too subordinate to try dump brawling, as well as the females, who now outnumbered males 2 to 1.
And while new alphas still battled each other for hierarchy, they ceased to harass lower-ranking males and females alike.
But perhaps most surprisingly, when alphas from other troops wandered into what Sapolsky later coined as the forest troop, they assimilated to this new Burning Man-like culture rather than regress to standard aggressive behavior.
We don't yet understand the mechanism of transmittal, Dr. Sapolsky told the New York Times, but the jerky new guys are obviously learning.
Ever since the tuberculosis epidemic killed the alpha males, the ratio has remained skewed, about twice as many females as males.
More than 30 years later, their offspring still maintain this genial social ethos.
After leaving his birth troop at around age seven, a male will find a new one and spend his prime years trying to fang his way up the hierarchy.
Once he's gained a modicum of status, he devotes his days to terrorizing lower-ranking males and females, who only grow to half his size.
In the mid-1980s, Dr. Robert Sapolsky, a primatologist living in Kenya, documented an unprecedented cultural shift when he noticed that the alpha males of a baboon population suddenly vanished.
The alphas had come upon a garbage dump near a tourist lodge, and they defended their spoils furiously from lower-ranking males and females, who were relegated to leaves, seeds, and insects on the forest floor.
One day, in the East African heat, the alphas were exposed to tainted meat at the dump, infecting them with bovine tuberculosis.
The males were among those who had been too subordinate to try dump brawling, as well as the females, who now outnumbered males 2 to 1.
And while new alphas still battled each other for hierarchy, they ceased to harass lower-ranking males and females alike.
But perhaps most surprisingly, when alphas from other troops wandered into what Sapolsky later coined as the forest troop, they assimilated to this new Burning Man-like culture rather than regress to standard aggressive behavior.
We don't yet understand the mechanism of transmittal, Dr. Sapolsky told the New York Times, but the jerky new guys are obviously learning.
Ever since the tuberculosis epidemic killed the alpha males, the ratio has remained skewed, about twice as many females as males.
More than 30 years later, their offspring still maintain this genial social ethos.
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