The Well-Connected Animal: Social Networks and the Wondrous Complexity of Animal Societies

by Lee Alan Dugatkin

An engaging exploration of the wondrous social webs that permeate life in animal societies around the world.
 
It’s all about who you know. Whether vampire bats sharing blood meals for survival, field crickets remembering champion fighters, macaque monkeys forming grooming pacts after a deadly hurricane, or great tit birds learning the best way to steal milk—it pays to be well connected.

In this tour of the animal kingdom, evolutionary biologist Lee Alan Dugatkin reveals a new field of study, uncovering social networks that existed long before the dawn of human social media. He accessibly describes the latest findings from animal behavior, evolution, computer science, psychology, anthropology, genetics, and neurobiology, and incorporates interviews and insights from researchers he finds swimming with manta rays, avoiding pigeon poop, and stopping monkeys from stealing iPads. With Dugatkin as our guide, we investigate social networks in giraffes, elephants, kangaroos, Tasmanian devils, whales, bats, and more. From animal networks in Australia and Asia to Africa, Europe, and the Americas, The Well-Connected Animal is an eye-opening exposé of wild friends, enemies, and everything in between.

Genres: Nonfiction, Animals, Nature, Audiobook, Science

264 pages, Hardcover

Published May 15, 2024

About the author

Born in 1962, Lee Alan Dugatkin is a professor and distinguished university scholar in the department of biology at the University of Louisville. His main area of research interest is the evolution of social behavior.

Reviews

[Cheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Careful writing ("The tags fall off on their own after a year or so, and they don't do any lasting harm to the [manta] rays) about careful science. ("... generate testable hypothesis....") ("'Maybe... people are just reporting particular [cockatoos] that they like,' she thought.") And so far I'm loving how engagingly written it is.

"When it comes to cooperative behaviors like huddling, sleeping together in a burrow, and more, life in egalitarian societies trumps life in networks with the privileged few." (At least for rock hyraxes.)

"But social capital in the play network was not significantly correlated with social capital in either the grooming or power networks. And that's where incorporating juveniles into the social networks became very useful." (In vervet monkeys.)

Btw, I'm loving that it's new. Too often I don't get around to reading science books until they've become more or less obsolete. This will, too, as the whole science of using computing power & maths to analyze complex nuances of social networks is new, and much research here is in progress. But it's still fascinating.
---
Ok done.
Why have I not heard that "in 1962 British biological anthropologist Vernon Reynolds began the Budongo Forest Project, A long term study of 800 or so chimpanzees... living in the forest" ?

What are eastern water dragons from Australia? I need to check.

Imo, the genius monkey who taught the Japanese macaque monkeys to wash their sweet potatoes, also "tossed her wheat and sand mixture into the water. The sand sank and the wheat floated. This is a bigger deal than it sounds, because primates virtually never let go of food once they have it in their hands.... And as with the sweet potatoes, Imo's troop mates learned this new trick from her. More than 60 years later, long after Imo's death, macaques on Koshima Islet still wash their sweet potatoes and clean their wheat...."

"... microbiome diversity matters when it comes to health, as research in other primates has shown that individuals with diverse microbiomes tend to be particularly healthy: centrality in a grooming network not only maintains social bonds, but it also fosters good health."

[Herm · Rating 4 out of 5]

interesting book about SNs and how different information spreads through animal societies

[Jolanta (knygupė) · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.9*

[Ali · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dugatkin uses this short volume to explain the growing application of social network analysis to animal behavioural studies. In chapters clustered around a particular type of analysis, he interviews a wide range of field researchers working on everything from sulpher crested cockatoos to baboons to dolphins, and studying everything from parasite spread to song evolution to power networks impact on survival to tool learning. He packs in several anecdotes about work in the field, possibly to make it more accessible. Unfortunately, the findings from the research can seem

[Brenda · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was interesting to learn about how researchers have studied how animal societies are connected. I liked the variety of animals, locations, and methods that were studied/used. Although the thing that will stick with me longer is the narrator's pronunciation of "clique". It took me longer than I should admit to figure out what he was saying. He pronounced it "kleek" and I have always pronounced it "click".

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think I have reunited myself with 4 year old Chris and his curiosity of animals and adult Chris knows enough stats to follow along the more scientific and statistical analysis done by the book😁

[Paige]

DNF at p23

Not vibing with this right now. For my taste/mood right now, it slightly too much like a literature review than a Pop Science book.

7.26.24

[Zeljka · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book thanks to the publisher and NetGalley. As usual, the offer didn't disappoint me.

This book delighted the never materialized little scientist in me, because I was always passionate about animals, animal welfare and research, but rarely did those books manage to make me feel that passion behind the scenes of the research projects those scientists were conducting.

Every being (humans included) connects over food, reproduction, power, safety, travel, communication, culture and health, no matter how diminutive these networks may seem to our eyes. Networks are not present only between individuals, but also between groups and different species, not to mention even peculiar specimens inside one single individual.

After discussing the very idea of the network itself, every type is dissected in their own chapter. Each chapter painstakingly covers three or more dissertations made by author's fellow scientists, including their fascinating stories behind the scenes of each.
I was surprised to discover there are so many animals being analyzed that I did not pay very much attention to - from guppies to manta rays, sifakas and macaques, to hyraxes and tasmanian devils, to bats, cockatoos, bees and... microbes.

Personally I found the most interesting aspect of those projects were sometimes cataclysmic events that were in no way created by scientists, but happened quite accidentally. Those disasters such as hurricanes, droughts, unexpected apocalyptic-like predator attacks threatened to completely derail the experiments, but eventually proved to be oddly beneficial to the projects, because they unwittingly showcased what scientists also needed: how networks function under - mildly put - adverse conditions and how dynamics changed afterwards for the survival and the betterment of the whole group and the individuals.

I do envy those scientists. I would have loved to work with a massive amount of data and to try to make sense of it all. However, I would have had a very difficult time not to get attached to the subjects of those experiments, as many of them did. Good thing though was that after such a sorrow, they felt a bit of relief that in many cases life did find a way, and with those experiments they showed just how. Some might say the conclusions were obvious - humans are also beings who rely on networking in any sense mentioned above. However, it took a generation or two of scientists, and a book or two just like this one I've just read, to accept that such assumptions may be applied to animals of lower ranking than humans, and that we all are not so fundamentally different as we like to think.

[Elisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best things about technology is how it has allowed us to learn more about non-human animals. As cool as it would be to imagine that this book is about house finches tweeting, the content is even more mind-blowing. The advent of social media got scientists thinking about the science of social networks and very soon ethologists joined the effort. This is what happens when you apply a new area to old data: you find out how animals, from giraffes to manta rays, have friends, acquaintances and even frenemies. Much of the research here was done way before Facebook even existed, but only social network analysis put it in context. The author has an approachable, colloquial style that makes the text easy to understand. At no point was I lost in the data, everything made perfect sense. It is also encouraging that this field is full of young scientists making their mark. You can even read about the birth of a cultural trend in chimpanzees live - right here as it happened. I can’t say enough good things about this amazing volume. Catnip for animal lovers.
I chose to read this book and all opinions in this review are my own and completely unbiased. Thank you, #NetGalley/#University of Chicago Press.

[Heather Coffee_Kindle · Rating 4 out of 5]

In a world so obsessed with social media, it's a real breath of fresh air to read about the social connections of animals and how they have always communicated and connected with each other.

A well written book, that isn't too science heavy, so is easy to understand, definitely worth a read

Thank you for this ARC NetGalley and the publishers

[Ian McLeod · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very interesting look into a cross section of many sciences through the lens of studying animal social networks. The book doesn't get too deep or boring, and is a great introduction to the field.

[Naomi · Rating 1 out of 5]

Less of a discussion and more of an almost disjointed retelling of multiple scientific studies. It was easy to lose interest when it was one after another of research plans and findings with no further discussion.

[Foggygirl · Rating 3 out of 5]

A great read, although the format was a bit rough around the edges due to the unfinished nature. Received from NetGalley.

[JW Dillingham · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wish I could give this fascinating book 5 stars, but the amount of minutiae can be a little overwhelming. Networking in non-humans is a rather new field of study, made possible by the development of technologies for observation and processing. The book covers projects in many countries around the world involving honeybees to homing pigeons, house mice to wildebeest, as well as many types of primates and aquatic species. A few were in controlled environments but the majority involved years of field work and just plain drudgery.

The amount of social networking, although no Facebook, among individuals in a species group is astounding. Networks including grooming, friendship and dislike, defense, cultural, even bacterial, are examined, including their influence on how and when animals learn new skills. I was amazed that the types of networks can vary so much along gender, age, biological, geographic, and other lines ... and how many similarities there were among some of the diverse species.

The book does not compare the non-human networks to known human ones, which I found quite refreshing. Highly recommend it to those interested in animal behavior and psychology.