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Animal Social Complexity - Intelligence and Culture
How are brain size and intelligence related to social complexity? What are the evolutionary underpinnings of cooperation? How sophisticated are animal communication and social cognition? And do animals have culture? These are some of the broad questions addressed by the eighteen papers in Animal Social Complexity, which look not only at primates and cetaceans, but also at hyenas, elephants, bats, and birds. The common focus is on societies that are individualized, with members recognising each other as individuals, and stable, with long-lived members and on-going relationships, and in which there are learned survival skills and social behaviours. Some of the papers are overviews of particular species or taxa, some address specific questions in the context of a particular species, and some present cross-species comparisons.
Consisting of the papers from a conference held in 2000, Animal Social Complexity is a professional volume, complete with a hundred pages of references. But the topics covered are of widespread interest, and the multi- and inter-disciplinary nature of the papers makes them mostly accessible to the lay reader.
Carel Van Schaik and Robert Deaner present a life history perspective on cognitive evolution: demonstrating a link between social complexity and intelligence/brain size is complicated because both are correlated with long life spans. Randall Wells presents an outline of dolphin social complexity based on long-term studies on the communities in Sarasota Bay, Florida. And Katy Payne gives an overview of social complexity in the three elephant species.
Christophe Boesch describes examples of complex cooperation among Tai chimpanzees, in group hunts for monkeys and in territorial conflict with other chimpanzee groups. Christine Drea and Laurence Frank describe the social system of spotted hyenas and argue that more attention should be paid to social complexity in carnivores. It has commonly been argued that social stress is a consequence of subordination; Scott Creel and Jennifer Sands present evidence suggesting that it may in fact be a cost of domination, at least in some species.
Three of the papers debate the underlying mechanisms of social cognition. Ronald Schusterman et al. argue for equivalence classifications as a basic structure. In contrast, Robert Seyfarth and Dorothy Cheney argue that "nonhuman primates are innately predisposed to group other individuals into hierarchical classes". And for Frans de Waal the conditionality of behaviour suggests a role for if-then structures in primate "social syntax".
Taking a comparative approach to laughter and smiling in primates, Jan Van Hoof and Signe Preuschoft find that "laughter has evolved in the context of joyful play, and that the broad smile has evolved as an expression of nonhostility and friendliness, taking its origin in the expression of fearful submission". Looking at vocal learning in four parrot species from Costa Rica, Jack Bradbury suggests that in "ecology, social organization, and vocal communication, parrots appear to be more convergent with dolphins than they are with other birds".
Gerald Wilkinson looks to bats for an independent test of the Machiavellian Intelligence hypothesis, probing the relationships between brain size, vocal complexity, and colony size. And Peter Tyack explores bottlenose dolphins' use of signature whistles in communicating social relationships.
Following in the footsteps of Imanishi, pioneer of Japanese primatology, Tetsuro Matsuzawa considers, as examples of "culture", sweet potato washing among Koshima monkeys and nut cracking using stone tools by Bossou chimpanzees. Toshisada Nishida describes the "flexibility and individuality of cultural behavior patterns" among chimpanzees at Mahale. And in "Ten Dispatches from the Chimpanzee Culture Wars" William McGrew gives an overview of the arguments between cultural anthropologists, psychologists, and primatologists (among others) over chimpanzee culture -- and over the definition of culture.
Hal Whitehead looks at sperm whales, the cetacean culture debate more generally, and the possible effects of "cultural hitchhiking" on genetic diversity. And Meredith West et al. find a critical role for social interaction in learning and development in cowbirds and starlings.
In addition to the eighteen papers, there are a dozen shorter "case studies" which tackle narrower questions. Animal Social Complexity is an important contribution to the scientific literature. And it has a wealth of material for anyone fascinated by social animals and not intimidated by scientific methodology, a little bit of statistics, references and scholarly language.
Danny Yee has written over 700 book reviews. You can purchase Animal Social Complexity: Intelligence and Culture from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
I HAve a animal like monkey penis..
sheila fraser audited my junk liberally. she strapped me onto parliament hill and she couldnt keep her offensive accountants off of me. she was performing many red ink calculations. i couldnt believe what the fuck was going on. i told her the New Conservative Party would not approve of an Auditor-General disgracing an elderly Prime Minister for free.
can you believe it? sheila fraser did all this. she picked me off the street, strapped my arms and legs down on parliament hill, and just wouldn't stop auditing my dealings.
they definately were red ink markings. the goddamn accountant she had in the back seat kept on marking up his pad every time she audited my dealings but did sheila fraser care? NO WAY! she just kept on doing it. I couldn't believe what the fuck was going on, indeed. I pleaded with sheila fraser but to no avail. i told her the New Conservative Party would not approve of an Auditor-General disgracing an elderly Prime Minister (at the time I was 65) without at least compensating me for the trauma and the use of my body as her own political plaything.
this got to her, worrying about her image. she continued to audit me, all the while ignoring the accountant's red marks. then she drove the frasermobile to my house and ejected the seat i was in! it was amazing. but surprisingly, after I woke up the next morning, my bank account had $150k in it!!! Can you believe it???
It doesn't help that I've been Prime Minister for two weeks. I can barely tolerate Sheila Copps in the House of Commons. If Fraser catches me with unauthorized contracts, she'll make me drop trau in front of the Speaker of the House.
There it is. They just found my $1.1b airbus contract. I've got to go.
Please post all comments regarding goats, goatses, or whatever else under this thread.
Moderators, please mod this up, because without this thread, there will be 30 other goat threads to moderate down. Just let the goats have their playground.
mares are very intelligent
Someone disagrees, fine. But how is this "off-topic?"
By the way, I have about 5300 karma.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
Is anyone else locked out of their account, with orkut acting like you don't exist as a member?
earlier i saw the member number drop from about 39,000 to 2,000 and now i try and login and it says invalid username, i do lost password, and it says no such email.
??
--- any post that takes longer than 20 seconds to write, isn't worth writing
nah nanny boo boo stick your head in doo doo
I found a really good dish to make
When making any of those 15 minute Lipton Sidekicks, put in some simulated bacon bits while boiling the water, and it's totally awesome.
My dish was with strogenoff