Status in Earlier Animals
Social status hierarchies have been documented in a wide range of animals: apes, baboons, wolves, cows/bulls, hens, even fish, and ants. Natural selection produces status-seeking behavior because animals tend to have more surviving offspring when they raise their status in their social group. Such behaviors vary widely because they are adaptations to a wide range of environmental niches. Some social dominance behaviors tend to increase reproductive opportunity, while others tend to raise the survival rates of an individual’s offspring. Neurochemicals, particularly serotonin, prompt social dominance behaviors without need for an organism to have abstract conceptualizations of status as a means to an end. Social dominance hierarchy emerges from individual survival-seeking behaviors.
Read more about this topic: Social Status
Famous quotes containing the words status, earlier and/or animals:
“At all events, as she, Ulster, cannot have the status quo, nothing remains for her but complete union or the most extreme form of Home Rule; that is, separation from both England and Ireland.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“Western hospitality prevails; it is reminiscent of the kind displayed earlier here by a host who said to an unexpected guest, “Stranger, you take the wold skin and the chaw o’ sowbelly—I’ll rough it.””
—Administration in the State of Texa, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“The greatness of man is so evident that it is even proved by his wretchedness. For what in animals is nature, we call in man wretchedness—by which we recognize that, his nature being now like that of animals, he has fallen from a better nature which once was his.”
—Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)