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Sociality is the degree to which individuals in an animal population tend to associate in social groups (gregariousness) and form cooperative societies. Sociality is a survival response to evolutionary pressures. [1] For example, when a mother wasp stays near her larvae in the nest, parasites are less likely to eat the larvae. [2]
Social learning refers to learning that is facilitated by observation of, or interaction with, another animal or its products. [1] Social learning has been observed in a variety of animal taxa , [ 2 ] [ 3 ] such as insects , [ 4 ] fish , [ 5 ] birds , [ 6 ] reptiles , amphibians [ 7 ] and mammals (including primates [ 8 ] ).
The division of labor creates specialized behavioral groups within an animal society, sometimes called castes. Eusociality is distinguished from all other social systems because individuals of at least one caste usually lose the ability to perform behaviors characteristic of individuals in another caste.
An example of hand gestures and facial expression accompanying speech. Although most animals can communicate nonverbally, humans have the ability to communicate with both verbal and nonverbal behavior. Verbal behavior is the content of one's spoken word. [35]
A further definition of culture is, "[s]ocially transmitted behavior patterns that serve to relate human communities to their ecological settings." [15] This definition connects cultural behavior to the environment. Since culture is a form of adaptation to one's environment, it is mirrored in many aspects of our current and past societies.
Sociobiology investigates social behaviors such as mating patterns, territorial fights, pack hunting, and the hive society of social insects. It argues that just as selection pressure led to animals evolving useful ways of interacting with the natural environment, so also it led to the genetic evolution of advantageous social behavior. [4]
Social grooming is a behavior in which social animals, including humans, clean or maintain one another's bodies or appearances. A related term, allogrooming , indicates social grooming between members of the same species.
For many animal societies, an individual's position in the dominance hierarchy corresponds with their opportunities to reproduce. [6] In hierarchically social animals, dominant individuals may exert control over others. For example, in a herd of feral goats it is a large male that is dominant and maintains discipline and coherence of the flock.