Studying wealthinequality in animals can reveal clues about how their societies evolved RSocPublishing
Inequality is one of the greatest challenges of modern society and plays a prominent role in social and political debate. In the fields of economics and sociology, scholars study inequality in order to understand where it comes from, what are its consequences, and how we might implement policies that produce more productive, healthy, and equitable societies. An insight from this work is that inequality can have potent consequences for those of us living in these societies.
It was this finding that captured the attention of Eli Strauss, from the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in Germany , and Daizaburo Shizuka, from University of Nebraska-Lincoln—two behavioral ecologists who study social evolution in non-human societies.
Figure from the paper demonstrating how wealth inequality in animals arises from different types of wealth . This inequality can have consequences for individuals that are independent of wealth , and both behavioral processes and ecological processes can shape the amount of inequality in societies . Social mobility, or changes in wealth in individuals and lineages over time, is predicted to impact individual and group traits .
The review highlights the ways in which these same human dimensions of wealth very clearly operate in animals. Territory ownership and access to food are types of material wealth that are widespread in animals. For instance, squirrels and acorn woodpeckers build food caches and stock them with hordes of nuts and seeds. In dolphins and New Caledonian crows, tool use techniques are valuable chunks of information that open up new foraging opportunities.
Social relationships are also a critical source of wealth in many species, such as in spotted hyenas and ravens, which form alliances with their group-mates that help them rise through the ranks in their societies. Interestingly, like wealth in humans, wealth in animals is sometimes transferred from parents to offspring.
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