Question

Discuss the paradox of primate sociality. What are the benefits and disadvantages of living in a group, and why might group life have been selected for?

Answer 1

Group size and socalisim is highly important in groups such as primates. They are many advantages like in larger group size have decreased risk of predation because predator less tend to attack individual with large group size. They may be protected by other threeats like infanticide , and they also learn in distribution of work and labour.

The disadvantage is that the efficiency of foraging gets reduce, individuals become interdependent with each other, hence reduce dependency of self is reduce. There is more competition within the group and individual tend to spend more time and resource for gathering of food and setting up a place.