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Collective representations are concepts, ideas, categories and beliefs that do not belong to isolated individuals, but are instead the product of a social collectivity. [1] Émile Durkheim (1858-1917) originated the term "collective representations" to emphasise the way that many of the categories of everyday use–space, time, class, number etc–were in fact the product of collective social ...
Collective animal behaviour is a form of social behavior involving the coordinated behavior of large groups of similar animals as well as emergent properties of these groups. This can include the costs and benefits of group membership, the transfer of information, decision-making process, locomotion and synchronization of the group.
In the English language, many animals have different names depending on whether they are male, female, young, domesticated, or in groups. The best-known source of many English words used for collective groupings of animals is The Book of Saint Albans , an essay on hunting published in 1486 and attributed to Juliana Berners . [ 1 ]
Group living may sometimes be confused with collective animal behavior. Collective animal behavior is the study of how the interactions between individuals of a group give rise to group level patterns and how these patterns have evolved. [5] Examples include the marching of locusts and flocks of migrating birds.
Shimmering behaviour of Apis dorsata (giant honeybees). A group of animals fleeing from a predator shows the nature of herd behavior, for example in 1971, in the oft-cited article "Geometry for the Selfish Herd", evolutionary biologist W. D. Hamilton asserted that each individual group member reduces the danger to itself by moving as close as possible to the center of the fleeing group.
Any attempt to give an exhaustive list of the archetypes would be a futile exercise since they tend to combine with each other and interchange qualities, making it difficult to decide where one archetype ends and another begins. For example, qualities of the shadow archetype may be prominent in an archetypal image of the anima or animus.
Ants are the best-known example of such a superorganism. A superorganism can be defined as "a collection of agents which can act in concert to produce phenomena governed by the collective", [2] phenomena being any activity "the hive wants" such as ants collecting food and avoiding predators, [3] [4] or bees choosing a new nest site. [5]
Over 1.5 million living animal species have been described—of which around 1 million are insects—but it has been estimated there are over 7 million in total. Animals range in size from 8.5 millionths of a metre to 33.6 metres (110 ft) long and have complex interactions with each other and their environments, forming intricate food webs .