Structural Balance Theory in the Animal Kingdom
Source: http://www.nimbios.org/press/FS_hyrax
The way we form relationships in our social networks can sometimes fall into predictive patterns. Some individuals are more likely to be our friends and others are more likely to be our enemies. Such patterns have long been noticed by social psychologists and can be explained by the Structural Balance Theory. A new study published in Animal Behavior, however, switched our perspective from the human social network to the animal kingdom by observing the bonding relationships among the hyraxes. It turned out that the mechanism underlying animals’ social structure highly resembles that of ours.
According to the study, biologists found the if hyrax A is friend to hyrax B and hyrax B is friend to hyrax C than it’s more likely that hyrax A will be friend with hyrax C, a pattern that is very common in the human social network, presenting the fact that “ a friend’s friend is likely to be your friend.” Another stable pattern includes 2 enemies and 1 pair of friend. If hyrax A is enemy to hyrax B and also enemy to hyrax C, then it will be very likely that B and C will become friends.
The animal social network, like that in the human civilization, can always adjust itself to a balanced mode. Newcomers, however, can sometimes break the stability of the social network. An interesting finding is that, sometimes hyraxes will form a triad in which every individual is the enemy to the others. The “my enemy’s enemy is my enemy” pattern, though unstable according to the Structural Balance Theory, is quite prevalent and stable in the animal world.
Social Balance Theory is a very good method to predict the pattern of relationships in social networks either human or other animals. The theory basically states that the relationship between two individuals is not only determined by them but can also be influenced by their relationships to a third party. Although the pattern in other animals strongly resembles that of human, minor differences can also be observed which might due to different adapting strategies installed by different evolutionary processes, which awaits more future research on this topic.