KEY POINTS:
In the 1970s a naturalist called Hans Kruuk and his team of researchers carried out an experiment as part of their studies in the Serengeti.
They'd trap a prey animal - a gazelle, wildebeest or impala - and paint a white X on its flank and then release it back into the herd. The other animals in the group would keep their distance from the marked animal.
Not only that, but when predators like lions, cheetahs, leopards or hyenas approached, they went straight for the marked subject every time. Painting the animal ensured it would be killed. The X was a death warrant.
Kruuk's experiment proves what every school child knows instinctively; it does not pay to be different. It is better to blend in. Prey animals such as those studied by Kruuk don't herd because they like each other's company; they do it to survive. Sticking together and not standing out is one of the few survival strategies available to these animals. Over time their behaviour has evolved to ensure they have the best chance possible of not ending up as breakfast for the Lion King.
I was galvanised when I read about this experiment last week. Here, finally, is proof that being different, daring to stand out from the crowd, is not just difficult, it is deadly.
We live in a society that values individuality, from an early age we're told "this above all, to thine own self be true". We're encouraged to march to the beat of our own drum, even if we're the only one that can hear it.
It's a laudable idea, and one entirely at odds with the reality of the world we grow up in. There are a raft of cliches available to describe the safari that is school, the concrete jungle in which some of us are predators but most of us are prey. And some of us are easier prey than others. Most of us learn quickly the value of herding, especially if our quirks or foibles have brought us to the attention of predators from an early age.
A few egregious personality quirks (reading on the bus, wearing my socks pulled up) were enough to mark me as a target from the age of about seven. I remember being teased and taunted, but managed to escape the worst of it by making friends, other girls who were in their own way as strange as myself. Swots mostly.
I'd like to say I chose these children because of a deep and immediate kinship I felt towards them, a kinship that grew into an abiding friendship that endures to this day. The truth is, I really didn't care who these girls were, or what they were like really. The important thing was, they didn't pick on me, and as part of a group it made it harder for others to pick on me also. Making friends for me was a strategy.
Oddballs, like wildebeest, know the value of the herd. Of course, there were others who weren't so smart, or so lucky. We all remember them, the "weird" kids. The weak ones. The lonely ones. The ones who for one reason or another, by virtue of appearance, demeanour or circumstance were as indelibly marked as Kruuk's painted gazelles. Something about them, how they looked, or how they dressed, or the things they said, made them targets for the bullies and objects of fear and derision for everyone else.
All of the other animals in the herd know that victimhood is contagious.
Stand close enough to a target and you'll become one too.
So we keep away and we turn away when the predators pounce.
The recent reports of schoolchildren so brutalised by their fellows they've taken their own lives, of happy slapping and fight clubs and outrages after lights out, have inspired the usual national hand wringing, the wondering what is wrong with us that our youth have become so savage.
But this isn't anything new really. There will always be predators and there will always be prey.
And for those of us unlucky enough to be the latter, the rules are simple. Stick together, don't stand out and avoid the marked targets at all costs.
