Among animal societies, dominance is an important social factor that influences inter-individual relationships. However, assessing dominance hierarchy can be a time-consuming activity which is potentially impeded by environmental factors, difficulties in the recognition of animals, or disturbance of animals during data collection. Here we took advantage of novel devices, machines for automated learning and testing (MALT), designed primarily to study non-human primate cognition, to additionally measure the dominance hierarchy of a semi-free-ranging primate group. When working on a MALT, an animal can be replaced by another, which could reflect an asymmetric dominance relationship. To assess the reliability of our method, we analysed a sample of the automated conflicts with video scoring and found that 74% of these replacements included genuine forms of social displacements. In 10% of the cases, we did not identify social interactions and in the remaining 16% we observed affiliative contacts between the monkeys. We analysed months of daily use of MALT by up to 26 semi-free-ranging Tonkean macaques (Macaca tonkeana) and found that dominance relationships inferred from these interactions strongly correlated with the ones derived from observations of spontaneous agonistic interactions collected during the same time period. An optional filtering procedure designed to exclude chance-driven displacements or affiliative contacts suggests that the presence of 26% of these interactions in data sets did not impair the reliability of this new method. We demonstrate that this method can be used to assess the dynamics of both individual social status, and group-wide hierarchical stability longitudinally with minimal research labour. Further, it facilitates a continuous assessment of dominance hierarchies in captive groups, even during unpredictable environmental or challenging social events, which underlines the usefulness of this method for group management purposes. Altogether, this study supports the use of MALT as a reliable tool to automatically and dynamically assess dominance hierarchy within captive groups of non-human primates, including juveniles, under conditions in which such technology can be used.

在动物社会中，支配地位是影响个体间关系的重要社会因素。然而，评估优势等级可能是一项耗时的活动，可能会受到环境因素、动物识别困难或数据收集过程中动物干扰的阻碍。在这里，我们利用了主要用于研究非人类灵长类动物认知的新型设备，即用于自动学习和测试 (MALT) 的机器，另外还测量了半自由放养的灵长类动物群体的优势等级。在处理 MALT 时，一种动物可以被另一种代替，这可能反映了一种不对称的优势关系。为了评估我们方法的可靠性，我们分析了一个带有视频评分的自动冲突样本，发现这些替代品中有 74% 包括真正形式的社会置换。在 10% 的案例中，我们没有发现社交互动，而在其余 16% 的案例中，我们观察到了猴子之间的亲缘关系。我们分析了多达 26 只半自由放养的 Tonkean 猕猴每天使用 MALT 的月份（猕猴桃) 并发现从这些相互作用中推断出的优势关系与从同一时期收集的自发激动相互作用观察得出的优势关系密切相关。一个旨在排除机会驱动的位移或从属联系的可选过滤程序表明，数据集中 26% 的这些相互作用的存在并没有损害这种新方法的可靠性。我们证明，这种方法可用于以最少的研究工作纵向评估个人社会地位和群体范围内的等级稳定性的动态。此外，即使在不可预测的环境或具有挑战性的社会事件期间，它也有助于对圈养群体的支配等级进行持续评估，这突显了这种方法对于群体管理目的的有用性。