The natural history of social bonds

This paper reviews the evolutionary processes that shape the evolution of sociality in mammalian species in an effort to understand the importance of sociality in the lives of modern humans. A body of theory and empirical evidence compiled by behavioral ecologists helps us to understand why (some) other animals live in groups, why group‐living animals form differentiated social bonds, how animals benefit from their social connections, and why some individuals are more social than others in their groups. Together, the answers to these questions help us to understand why humans are such social creatures, and why our social connections play such an important role in our lives.

• Publication year

  2025

• Venue

  Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences

• Publication date

  2025-03-18

• Fields of study

  Biology, Medicine, Psychology

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1111/nyas.15318PMID 40101114
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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