X. Social life and social intelligence in the wild

Alpha children wear grey. They work much harder than we do, because they're so frightfully clever. I'm really awfully glad I'm a Beta, because I don't work so hard. And then we are much better than the Gammas and Deltas.

The Brave New World

By Aldous Huxley

After discussing animal language behaviour in the previous part, in this, final part of the book, we will consider the question who speaks, if “speaks” at all. It is impossible to understand specific communication systems ignoring specific codes of social inter-relations. Some of these codes are controlled by flexible and intelligent behaviour whereas others are innate. Together with mechanisms of maintaining social structure such as hierarchy and nepotism, which can be considered universal for many social animals, there are many specific variants of sociality, and in some species several variants of sociality of different levels of complexity fit within species-specific “toolbars”. Display of social behaviour in animals is diverse, and one can find thousands of interesting papers and hundreds of books devoted to evolutionary, ecological and ethological aspects of social life in the wild. In this part I only briefly analyse the role of intelligence in functioning of animal societies.

33. DIVERSITY OF SOCIAL SYSTEMS IN ANIMALS

Social systems in animals can be described in terms of social organisation, i.e. characteristic grouping patterns, mating systems, and variants of the social relationships among individuals. It is not easy to navigate the diversity of social systems in Nature. Analogous variants of social structures develop independently in distant classes of the Animal Kingdom. At the general level of consideration, some forms of territorial, aggressive, breeding, and parental behaviour can be displayed similarly in some species of birds, mammals, and insects. For instance, dragonflies display similar with vertebrates’ characteristics of territorial defence and hunting behaviour. At the same time, closely relative species often possess essentially different social organisations. Thus, four species of great apes live in tropical forests since Miocene and share many lines of life histories; nevertheless they show dramatic variations in their social systems (for a review see: van Schaik et al., 2004). In contrast, the large cat family, which has cosmopolitan distribution and a great diversity of habitats, retains relative uniformity of socio-demographic systems in many (but surely not all) species (Guggisberg, 1975; Green, 1991).

Social flexibility of a species is often associated with its ability to inhabit different habitats (Lott, 1991). For example, rodents such as marmots, prairie voles, striped mouse and some others can be monogamous or solitary promiscuous, or polygynous or cooperatively breeding depending on the habitat they occupy (Rogovin, 1992; Roberts et al., 1998; Schradin and Pillay, 2004; Randall et al., 2005). Many ant species possess multiple social and foraging organisations, depending on their ecological variables, from solitary foraging in small families to “professional” division of labour in million strong colonies (Reznikova, 1979, 1980, 1999). Using quantitative comparisons, Clutton-Brock (1974) and Clutton-Brock and Harvey (1977) showed that species differences in group size, ranging behaviour and sexual dimorphism among primates are consistently related to ecological variables, such as diet type, timing of activity, and breeding system.

There are many ways to rate types of animal communities basing on characteristic features of their social systems. For example, species like elephants, dolphins, and some primates, live in the so-called fission-fusion societies where social groups meet up and then disperse again on a regular basis. Many fossorial and semi-fossorial rodents live in stable groups often sharing burrow efforts and using common trails and holes. When considering social styles of life one can find more common in pumas and tortoises than in pumas and lions. Analogous social structures in very distant species could be developed under influence of rather different evolutionary events and ecological circumstances. At the same time there is not a broad spectrum of variants of social roles of individuals within groups. This lightens the work of those who are willing to classify animal societies.

Sociobiological approach elaborated by Edward Wilson (1975) allows describing animal societies basing on the style of social life which may be common for taxonomically distant species. Sociobiology is not primarily related to gathering new kinds of data; rather, it is a way of looking at biological phenomena related to social behaviour from a comprehensive and explicitly evolutionary perspective.

Here we consider briefly only two of many existing approaches for such a classification. According to the first of them all communities can be subdivided into two large types, namely, anonymous and individualised communities. Although very simple, this approach is useful when prediction of division of relationship within communities is needed. The second approach for classification is based on “levels of sociality” that can be distinguished in groups of animals.