Work can feel like a jungle sometimes, with colleagues beating their chests to tout achievements and bosses strutting around like alpha gorillas. So when it comes to the acrobatic act of swinging from employee to Twitter follower to Facebook friend at the office, take some cues from actual apes. Serge Wich, a leading orangutan expert and primatologist at the Great Ape Trust in Des Moines, Iowa, says you should start by making a clear distinction between friends and followers. Friending implies equivalency, a red flag to primates. A subordinate ape is risking trouble when he tries to cozy up to a dominant one. The big shot might respond with an aggressive outburst meant to put the little guy in his place. Something like that from a boss can ruin a perfectly good casual Friday.
But that doesn't mean you shouldn't go ahead and friend your boss anyway. 
Despite such humiliating warnings, Wich notes, subordinate monkeys know that schmoozing superiors is a smart survival strategy: "If they don't develop a friendly relationship with a primate in a position of power, they could be attacked by predators or other monkeys and left to defend themselves." And if getting in with the dominant ape is just not working, a junior-level type will often try to befriend the second most powerful simian on the scene. So if it seems too risky for you to friend the CEO, consider building a network among those immediately above you in the chain of command.
That said, if the rules of the jungle are any guide, you should definitely follow the Twitter feeds of all your superiors. Dominant monkeys occasionally send out troopwide alerts (i.e., yelps and screams) about the state of the jungle. Sometimes it's information about predators; other times it's about the direction the troop will move that day. The expectation is that all of these pronouncements will be duly noted, and we all know that leaders can get extremely angry if they are not heeded. Our closest animal ancestors laid down the law—we have no choice but to follow.
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