Social Animals | Social Behaviour in Animals

Did You know About Social Animals or that Animals have Social Life too?

Many species of insects and most vertebrates show a variety of hostile or friendly group behavioural activities associated with numbers of individuals living together. This is known as Social Behaviour of Social Animals.

The cooperation achieved as a result of social behaviour has adaptive significance. It increases the efficiency and effectiveness of the species of social animals over that of other species. So it sounds amazing . Now these behaviour may include:
1-Division of labour
2-Team work
3-Defense
4-Search of food duties

Silverback Gorilla

Hostile and Helpful behaviours of Social Animals:

In bees hives, hostile interaction is seen among the worker bees. Other worker bees kill the Old worker bee if she is unable to perform its duties in hives.

Helpful interaction is also found among these bees as different bees have specific duties to perform over all the functions of hives.

1- Worker bees collect nectar and transform it into honey

2-Drones are specific to perform the duty to fertilize the eggs

3-Queen lays eggs.

Worker bee collecting nectar from sunflower

 

Animal Society Vs Aggregation

A society, or social group, is a group of individuals of the same species that interact with each other and influence each other's behaviour in different ways. This behavioural interaction is a key characteristic of society.

A simple aggregation is a group of animals that may be together but donot interact behaviourally.

Are flock of birds, group of zebras or buffaloes socities?

No. These are simply aggregations. Because they live together but not interact behaviourly.

Flock of birds flying and sunset

Group of zebras in Jungle

Lets find out what Socities and Social animals actually are!

These includes:
1-Bee hive
2-Gorilla teritory
3-Hens in a cage

1-Territorial Behaviour

It is the defense of an area by an organism or group of organism against organisms of same or different specie. There are threat displays between owners of adjacent territories. Despite the apparent conflict and aggression associated with territory formation, actual fighting is rare. Mostly threats, gestures and postures replace actual fighting.

Gorillas As Social Animals

They are highly social and live in groups called troops. The oldest and strong adult male (silverback) is dominant and has exclusive breeding rights with females. Adolescent female is transfer to a different troop at age of 8 years, while adolescent male remain in troop until it is old and strong silver back.

Although they are non territorial but exhibit it in order to intimidate whatever threats them. They pound their chests by standing upright on their legs. These gestures are more for a show and arenot violent.

2-Dominance hierachy

It i s a behaviour that ranks animals determining their acess to resources such as food, mate, space, reproduction. The dominant individuals obtain most access to resources. In some animals, dominance is a simple function of aggressiveness which is itself often influenced by sex hormones.

Hens As Social Animals

When unfimiliar hens are put together, they start chasing and pecking each other. Eventually form a clear peck order. This ranks them as alpha or beta and so on . The alpha will have acess to all resources first and so on. She is not pecked by any other hens and can usually drive off all others by threats rather than actual pecking.

3-Altruism

It is principle of living for interests of other. Altruism refers to any behaviour that endangers an organism or reduce its reproductive success. But benefits other members of its specie. This behaviour is common in animal kingdom. 

For example, female worker bees forgo reproduction and devote their lives to raising offspring of the queen.

Honeybee colony

It has three castes:
1-Queen 2-Workers 3-Drone
Queen could only lay egg and mate with drone during flight. The queen control the bees with a chemical called pheromone. The bees ingest this chemical by licking the queen. And then pass the substance around from one another as they pass food. Pheromone make the worker bees sterile.

The any new queen to emerge may kill the other candidate queen and assume rule. Or may create another swarm and leave to establish new hive. sometimes the old queen with a group of some worker bees leave the hive to make a new hive. This happens when there is a threat that any new queen may kill the old queen.

Worker bee lick pheromone tail of queen and become unfertile. They also take care of other bees. The worker bee perform all tasks of hive except mating and laying eggs.
The drones are male bees that fertilize the eggs of the queen. The drones develop from unfertilized eggs of queen. Any fertilized egg can develop into either queen or a worker bee. This depends upon how the egg is housed and fed.

At the time of mating, many drones follow the queen out of the hive, following her pheromone tail. They mate in flight. Sometimes they die during mate. Drones that donot mate also have no better fate. In winter season worker bees pinch them, sting them and throw them out.

>> Learn more about this topic on Wikipidea.

>> Also Read our Post on Vestigial Structures (Non-Functional Organs) in Humans & Animals.

>> Or Visit our Blog  Science Health Blogs.

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