VIII. 



Social Transitions 



WHEN DOES an animal group become truly social? 

 This question has already arisen in preceding chap- 

 ters and is difficult for a thoughtful biologist to an- 

 swer with confidence. 



One school, now happily small, regards society as 

 beginning when animals first display a social in- 

 stinct. (16) By this they probably mean that social 

 animals have inherited a behavior pattern that 

 causes them to live together with others of their kind 

 in more or less closely co-operative units. Others 

 consider that animals are social when they carry on 

 group life in which there is clear evidence of a divi- 

 sion of labor. (42) There is also the frequent sug- 

 gestion that only those animals are truly social whose 

 behavior is an extension, directly or indirectly, of 

 familial behavior. (119) 



For myself, I regard those groups in which ani- 

 mals confer distinct survival values upon each other 

 as being at least partially social; this is the concep- 

 tion that has most often appeared in these pages. (3) 



244 



