Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
an understanding of the dynamics of a social system is a prerequisite to pre-
dicting the effect of human activities on, for example, spatial organization,
population dynamics, and dispersal. For example, attempts to control the
transmission of bovine tuberculosis by killing badgers, a reservoir of the dis-
ease, clearly disrupts the society of survivors. The effects of such perturbation
on social dynamics may alter the transmission of the disease, plausibly for the
worse (Swinton et al. 1997). A similar case may be argued regarding rabies
control (Macdonald 1995). Translocation of elephants without regard for the
social structure that provides adolescent discipline has led to problem animals
in some African parks (McKnight 1995). Tuyttens and Macdonald (in press)
review some consequences of behavioral disruption for wildlife management.
Population control has been shown to affect the rate and pattern of dispersal
(Clout and Efford 1984), home range size (Berger and Cunningham 1995),
territoriality, mating system (Jouventin and Cornet 1980), and the nature of
social interactions (Lott 1991) in a variety of species.
UNDERSTANDING OURSELVES
So much is similar in the basic biology of vertebrates, and so universal are the
processes of evolution, that an understanding of nonhuman sociality is likely
to illuminate human society. This point was hitherto neglected, but stressed by
Tinbergen in the foreword to Kruuk's (1972:xi-xiii) topic, in which he con-
cluded, “It is therefore imperative for the healthy development of human biol-
ogy that studies of primates be supplemented by work on animal species that
have evolved adaptations to the same way of life as ancestral man.” Following
Wilson's (1975) Sociobiology, it has been widely and sometimes controversially
discussed. Clearly, two routes come to mind as fruitful sources of this insight:
looking at the societies of species most similar to our current condition
(including some hypersocial aspects that put us in circumstances to which we
have not yet had time to evolve) and focusing on those currently entering evo-
lutionary phases through which we have already passed. The first approach has
prompted (or at least its promise has funded) much primatological research.
The closeness of this parallel might be diluted if, as Hinde (1981) suggested,
the societies of humans differ from those of other animals in that social struc-
ture in nonhumans is determined primarily by the sum of the interactions of
its component individuals, whereas in human groups a structure is more often
imposed from above by government or tradition in the form of Dawkins's
(1989) memes. Hinde's dichotomy may imply that the imposition of structure
can cause stresses in human social systems when natural roles conflict with
assigned roles. On the other hand, one could take the view that the dichotomy
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