8
votes
Accepted
What do you call clearly different sub-groups within a species?
In eusocial insects, especially ants and bees, these groups are called "castes" (see e.g. Hölldobler & Wilson, 1990. This is the same term that is used for social stratifications in some human ...
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7
votes
Accepted
Can brain damage caused by physical injury affect the social behaviour of a person?
Socialization is a cognitive and executive brain based function that requires higher level thinking mechanisms usually dependent on the prefrontal coretex. A lot of social cues we obtain from our ...
- 534
7
votes
Accepted
Would it be possible to create logical circuits out of insects?
In short, yes, it appears to be possible, and a number of people have performed investigations in this area. For example, see the "Ant-Based Computing" article suggested by @Roland, whose ...
- 6,977
5
votes
Accepted
How selective are wolves about the size of their prey?
You should not post here until you've demonstrated your own research effort. Given this stipulation -- and the rich literature about this very topic -- I will keep my answer cursory so as to act as ...
- 29.7k
5
votes
Why social animals attack odd members of their own group?
Persecution is not a term often used in zoology, compared for example to the notion of social exclusion and hierarchy disputes/social animal hierarchy. That is because humans incarcerate animals which ...
- 10.3k
4
votes
Male Parenting from Evolution point
Because mother invest the most material and time into producing the offspring, so there is a stronger pressure on them to not waste it. Males can go impregnate other females so there is a stronger ...
- 14.3k
4
votes
The evolutionary advantage of sending the most fearless to the front
Species evolve, but individuals are selected. Simplifying a bit, a species evolves as relative allele frequencies change in the population. When natural selection is at play, these changes in allele ...
- 44k
3
votes
Do microorganisms have complex social behaviors like dominance hierarchies, just as "higher animals" do?
Short answer
All of these papers describe competition; that's all they share in common. Competition is ubiquitous in nature; it need not even involve organisms that have ever encountered each other: ...
- 44k
3
votes
Are there mammalian species in which the male makes no contribution after coitus?
Narrowly speaking, the answer to your question is "yes, most of them". West and Capellini (2016) analyze a data set comprising 529 mammalian species, of which only 65 have any form of male ...
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3
votes
Intuitive explanation for Kin- and Group- selection
Are kin selection and group selection the same thing? Yes and no.
Yes: These days people tend to use the "direct fitness approach" (Taylor and Frank JTB 1996). It turns out that this is based on ...
3
votes
Accepted
Why do ants dig surface paths?
I don't have it with me, but the book Adventures among Ants by Mark Moffett, which I highly recommend if you're even vaguely interested in ants, describes the creation of paths such as this. Some ants ...
- 3,245
3
votes
Accepted
Can animals like squirrels leave "gifts" or tribute for humans?
I believe a lot of these behaviours can fall under the umbrella term of reciprocity, or reciprocal altruism.
In evolutionary biology, reciprocal altruism is a behaviour whereby an
organism acts ...
- 501
3
votes
Accepted
Frogs stop croaking at same time
Calling is a risky activity because it makes the frog conspicuous to predators. When calling in a group, the risk to any given individual is minimized to the point that the minimal risk is outweighed ...
- 1,204
2
votes
Does Japan have an ageing population?
I hate to sound rude, but you could easily answer this yourself with even the most minimal look into well-tabulated demographic information, rather than highly non-representative observations. About ...
2
votes
Can someone explain this phenomena?
Parakeets are social animals that live in large groups (flocks). Under ideal environmental conditions, they can form flocks composed of thousands of birds. http://www.softschools.com/facts/animals/...
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2
votes
Factors That Would Promote Eusocial Development In Mammals?
What?
Eusociality in mammals can be defined by the following criteria:
reproductive altruism (which involves reproductive division of labor and cooperative alloparental brood care);
overlap of adult ...
- 52.3k
2
votes
Accepted
Are there any eusocial swarms which act prosocially?
Argentine ants.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argentine_ant
Global "mega-colony": The absence of aggression within Argentine ant
colonies was first reported in 1913 by Newell & Barber,...
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2
votes
Accepted
What is the function of smelly sweat in primates?
It's a tricky query to answer, so here's some prelim info and someone can be more specific from there:
Apocrine glands are a type of sweat gland found in certain mammals, including humans. These ...
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1
vote
What is the function of smelly sweat in primates?
To elaborate slightly on the existing answer in which mention is made of 'genetic compatibility', there are many compelling studies which indicate a strong preference for dissimilarity in class 1 HLA ...
- 189
1
vote
Accepted
Do animals lie?
This question has been well studied by cognitive scientists who are interested in which aspects of complex human behavior are also exhibited by animals.
The only real problem here is that the word &...
- 6,977
1
vote
Did mammals evolve from something with eusociality?
No. The only truly eusocial mammals are Heterocephalus glaber (the naked mole-rat) and Fukomys damarensis (the damaraland blesmol). Eusociality doesn't just involve an individual sacrificing their ...
- 412
1
vote
Accepted
What's the technical terminology for call-and-respond type behaviour?
if you are referring to call and response in rapid succession, ethologist use the terminology "turn-taking" or "antiphonal calling".
Many species do it with different degrees of precision.
A rapid ...
- 1,375
1
vote
Accepted
When is an ant colony at its loudest?
I believe you speak of some species of Formica spp., such as Formica polyctena (nest example)
You should mind that (i) ants are not particularly noisy insects; (ii) ant nests are 3-dimensional ...
- 318
1
vote
How to mark an ant with the least disturbance to the ant and the nest
For this purpose, people usually paint ants on top of the thorax (not on the head where it can prevent eyes and antenna to function normally, nor on the abdomen where it can block the spiracles and ...
- 375
1
vote
How do polygyne Carebara affinis or C. diversus (a.k.a. Pheidologeton affinis and P. diversus) colonies work?
I don't know about their polygyne nature, but carebara diversa queens are between 20-25mm and carebara affinis queens are between 14-16mm and are slightly lighter in colour. Hopefully that should help ...
- 11
1
vote
Accepted
Are there any animals that celebrate communally?
An event causes us to perform some sort of celebration that is motivated simply by joy and not any sort of survival instinct.
Celebrations usually mean large group activity but a play can be ...
- 214
1
vote
Can animals like squirrels leave "gifts" or tribute for humans?
Look, I searched your question about the animals that bring to humans some "gifts" and the only thing I found, was only for the cats. So, if you are intrested check this :
Cats are, first and ...
- 667
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