Social Patterns of Hyenas and Triadic Closures
http://www.sci-news.com/biology/science-spotted-hyenas-02811.html
Dr. Amiyaal Ilany has been doing research on hyenas for over 20 years recording over 500,000 observations. They specifically are researching hyena social interactions. Hyenas are large dog-like mammals which can live up to 22 years. They are social animals that live in large clans that can get up to 100 hyenas.
Like humans, hyenas are more social within small groups within these large clans. Ilany found that there was a pattern to this “cohesive clustering” where friends of friends were very likely to be friends as well. This pattern is commonly found in humans and in the textbook in Chapter 2, we define this pattern as the triadic closure property: “If two people in a social network have a friend in common, then there is an increased likelihood that they will become friends themselves at some point in the future [347].”
Ilany also found that sex, social rank, and environmental factors played a role in the formation of these clusters as well but “the ability for individuals to form and maintain social bonds in triads was key”. Humans and hyenas are not that different when it comes to social interactions. The formation of human friendships often depends on similar factors.
But why is it that both humans and hyenas form these triadic closures? For hyenas, Dr. Ilany found that these triadic closures can “facilitate efficient cooperation and hence maximize fitness, and so our study shows that hyenas exploit this advantage.” For humans, usually when two people are friends, they have something in common whether it be their interests or personalities or both. Therefore, two friends of a person are also likely to be friends because they might also share that same characteristic. This also holds true for Hyenas just instead interests or personalities these shared characteristics might be social status or hunting habits.