Social complexity primates

As our understanding of primate societies has deepened, the expression social complexity occurs more and more frequently. However, it has not been subjected to systematic analysis. Tom Sambrook and I have begun an assault on this task, attempting as far as possible to identify components of social complexity that in principle could be independently measured, even where this is currently difficult in practice (e.g. A. Whiten T. Sambrook, unpublished paper, Am Soc Primatol, July 1994, Sambrook 1995). 

Table 1 lists a number of proposed dimensions of social complexity in primates. Our approach to complexity has been that at the most abstract level, one system is more complex than another if it contains more elements and, even more importantly, more combinations or links between the elements. This conception underlies our approach to both social complexity and cognitive complexity. The social complexity we want to define is that which is predicted to require a more intelligent brain to engage with it, if biological fitness is to be maintained or enhanced (Sambrook Whiten 1997). One society might thus count as more complex than another if to succeed in it, a member had, for example, to process... 

TABLE 1 Some dimensions of social complexity in primates... 

Epple, G., A. Belcher, K.L. Greenfield, I. Kuderling, K. Nordstrom A.B. Smith. 1989. Scent mixtures used as social signals in two primate species Saguinus fuscicollis and Saguinus oedipus. In Perception of Complex Smells and Tastes, eds. D.E. Laing, W.S. Cain, R.L. McBride B.W. Aclre, pp. 1-25, Academic Press, Australia. 

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