Many animals live in social groups and have behaviours that are adapted to group living.
Examples of animal behaviours adapted to group living are
social hierarchy
Social hierarchy is a rank order within a group of animals consisting of a dominant and subordinate members.
In a social hierarchy, dominant individuals carry out ritualistic (threat) displays whilst subordinate animals carry out appeasement behaviour to reduce conflict.
Social hierarchies increase the chances of the dominant animal’s favourable genes being passed on to offspring.
Animals often form alliances in social hierarchies to increase their social status within the group.
cooperative hunting
Co-operative hunting may benefit subordinate animals as well as dominant ones, as they may gain more food than by foraging alone.
Co-operative means less energy is used per individual.
Co-operative hunting enables larger prey to be caught and increases the chance of success.
social defence
Social defence strategies increase the chance of survival as some individuals can watch for predators whilst others can forage for food.
Groups adopt specialised formations when under attack, protecting their young.
An altruistic behaviour harms the donor individual but benefits the recipient.
Reciprocal altruism, where the roles of donor and recipient later reverse, often occurs in social animals.
Behaviour that appears to be altruistic can be common between a donor and a recipient if they are related (kin).
Behaviour that appears to be altruistic between a related donor and recipient means the donor will benefit in kin selection in terms of the increased chances of survival of shared genes in the recipient’s offspring or future offspring.
Social insects include bees, wasps, ants and termites.
Social insect societies are structured so that only some individuals (queens and drones) contribute reproductively.
Most members of insect colonies are sterile workers who co-operate with close relatives to raise relatives.
Sterile workers raise relatives to increase survival of shared genes.
Examples of workers’ roles include
Primates have a long period of parental care to allow learning of complex social behaviour.