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An animal that exhibits a high degree of sociality is called a social animal. The highest degree of sociality recognized by sociobiologists is eusociality . A eusocial taxon is one that exhibits overlapping adult generations , reproductive division of labor , cooperative care of young, and—in the most refined cases—a biological caste system .
The division of labor creates specialized behavioral groups within an animal society, sometimes called castes. Eusociality is distinguished from all other social systems because individuals of at least one caste usually lose the ability to perform behaviors characteristic of individuals in another caste.
It is possible that anthropomorphism leads humans to like non-humans more when they have apparent human qualities, since perceived similarity has been shown to increase prosocial behavior toward other humans. [55] A study of how animal behaviors were discussed on the television series Life found that the script very often used anthropomorphisms ...
Sociobiology investigates social behaviors such as mating patterns, territorial fights, pack hunting, and the hive society of social insects. It argues that just as selection pressure led to animals evolving useful ways of interacting with the natural environment, so also it led to the genetic evolution of advantageous social behavior. [4]
Animals often portray many similar characteristics displayed by humans. There exists the belief that while both humans and animals evolve simultaneously, domesticated animals have benefited the most from human-animal relationships because they have increased in population to a far greater extent than would've occurred naturally.
Even compared with other social animals, humans have an unusually high degree of flexibility in their facial expressions. [291] Humans are the only animals known to cry emotional tears. [292] Humans are one of the few animals able to self-recognize in mirror tests [293] and there is also debate over to what extent humans are the only animals ...
Similarities between the behavior of humans and animals have sometimes been used in an attempt to understand the evolutionary significance of particular behaviors. Differences in the treatment of animals have been said to reflect a society's understanding of human nature and the place of humans and animals in the scheme of things.
Dunbar's number has become of interest in anthropology, evolutionary psychology, [12] statistics, and business management.For example, developers of social software are interested in it, as they need to know the size of social networks their software needs to take into account; and in the modern military, operational psychologists seek such data to support or refute policies related to ...