Animal research: Panel, 1960: 1. Behavioral organization and genesis of the social bond in insects and mammals.

Abstract

Evidence on behavior in army ants and in domestic cats supports for each of these animals a distinctive theory of the mosaic or developmental-integration type rather than one based upon postulates of innate organization. The army-ant species-typical pattern, arising through the coordination of functional factors contributed by very different types of individuals in the developmental situation, is roughly similar to that of cats in its biological basis. In the ant, larval secretions (e.g.) in their behavioral effects broadly parallel those of parturitive fluids in cats in facilitating a social bond. The manner in which social functions develop, however, is strikingly different in the two cases. On the insect level a biosocial organization is achieved, dominated throughout in behavioral manifestations by sensory, secretory and other processes and changing under their impress. Recurrent cyclic shifts in army-ant colony behavior illustrate this strikingly. On the mammalian level, although endogenous factors such as uterine contractions are basic for the social bond, "...their effects constitute intervening variables leading indirectly to a psychosocial system in the development of which the intimate cooperation of factors of maturation, experience and learning is paramount at all stages." Results are discussed indicating a sequence of three main stages in the reciprocal mother-young stimulative reciprocal mother-young stimulative relationships of the domestic cat through the litter period. Factors of experience (i.e., stimulative effects from the medium), very limited in the army-ant pattern, in the cat (with learning) play a complex and progressive role.