Aggression heuristics underlie animal dominance hierarchies and provide evidence of group-level social information
Abstract
In animal conflict, the more information individuals have about their social world the better decisions they can make about whom to fight. Determining what animals “know,” however, has proved difficult. We reverse-engineer how information about an individual’s rank structures their aggression. Applying this method to species from ants to primates, we found that while most groups use simple rules to choose fights some groups used more information-rich patterns. A key result is that these information-rich patterns were not restricted to species thought to be more cognitively sophisticated and that their use varied within species. Our work connects sociality with information, provides possibilities for comparative analyses, and opens avenues to study the relationship between individual decision-making and social outcomes.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Pub Defense Publication
- Publication Date
- Mar 03, 2021
- Source ID
- 10.1073/pnas.2022912118
Entities
People
- Dan Mønster
- Elizabeth A Hobson
- Simon Dedeo
Organizations
- Aarhus University
- Army Research Office
- Carnegie Mellon University
- Independent Research Fund Denmark
- Santa Fe Institute
- University of Cincinnati