[hirundo]

Analogies can be useful even with zero common physiology. Please do try to compare human behavior to anything and everything in order to gain perspective on it. It's useful to compare mathematical models to human behavior, let alone another life form that we share genes with.

[throwaway4787]

Actually they can be actively harmful in that they lead people to do spurious reasoning with the unwarranted confidence that came from the false reassurance of it being "biology", "science" or "evolution". People have already done it with enough times (such as e.g. wolves, or lobsters (!)) with detrimental effects that I felt a big fat disclaimer was warranted here.

[hirundo]

They can be useful. They can be actively harmful. These are compatible statements. They are true of any tool. The more powerful the tool, the truer they both are.

The problem is when the statement becomes "<tool> should not be used because it can be actively harmful." Better is "<tool> should be used with extra care not to cause harm", which is much different.

I do think that it's useful to compare the biology of crustacean and mammalian dominance hierarchies, even given that many people will confuse the descriptive with the normative.

In a scientific epistemology, taboo subjects are taboo.