What's so social about primate sociality?

Primate Conversations Seminar

Exactly how and why primate sociality is different to that of other animals has long puzzled everyone. I will make the case that primate’s peculiarly bonded form of sociality arose because of a tradeoff between trying to minimise predation risk and the costs incurred in terms of reduced fertility: with these two creating a series of glass ceilings that could only be breached in order to achieve larger group sizes by evolving new kinds of behaviour and the cognition needed to underpin these.