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:
“The influx of women into paid work and her increased power raise a woman’s aspirations and hopes for equal treatment at home. Her lower wage and status at work and the threat of divorce reduce what she presses for and actually expects.”
—Arlie Hochschild (20th century)
“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)
“Man’s unique reward, however, is that while animals survive by adjusting themselves to their background, man survives by adjusting his background to himself.”
—Ayn Rand (1905–1982)