Social mammals

Social mammals

Mammals that exhibit social behavior. This may be defined as any behavior stimulated by or acting upon another animal of the same species. In this broad sense, almost any animal which is capable of behavior is to some degree social. Even those animals which are completely sedentary, such as adult sponges and sea squirts, have a tendency to live in colonies and are social to that extent. Social reactions are occasionally given by species other than the animals' own; an example would be the relations between domestic animals and humans.

The postnatal development of each species is closely related to the social organization typical of the adults. Every highly social animal has a short period early in life when it readily forms attachments to any animal with which it has prolonged contact. The process of socialization begins almost immediately after birth in ungulates like the sheep, and the primary relationship is formed with the mother. In dogs and wolves the process does not begin until about 3 weeks of age, at a time when the mother is beginning to leave the pups. Consequently the strongest relationships are formed with litter mates, thus forming the foundation of a pack. Many rodents stay in the nest long after birth; primary relationships are therefore formed with nest mates. Young primates are typically surrounded by a group of their own kind, but because they are carried for long periods the first strong relationship tends to be with the mother.

Mammals may develop all types of social behavior to a high degree, but not necessarily in every species. Mammals have great capacities for learning and adaptation, which means that social relationships are often highly developed on the basis of learning and habit formation as well as on the basis of heredity and biological differences. The resulting societies tend to be malleable and variable within the same species and to show considerable evidence of cultural inheritance from one generation to the next. Mammalian societies have been completely described in relatively few forms, and new discoveries will probably reveal the existence of a greater variety of social organization.

Basic human social organization and behavior obviously differs from that of all other primates, although it is related to them. At the same time, the range of variability of human societies as seen in the nuclear family does not approach that in mammals as a whole. Human societies are characterized by the presence of all fundamental types of social behavior and social relationships rather than by extreme specialization. See Ethology, Human ecology, Reproductive behavior