Triadic Closure & Hyenas
Hyenas typically trave
l and live with clans of more than 100 individuals; they can live up to 22 years. However, hyenas do not form bonds with every member of the clan. After performing a twenty year long study on the behavioral patterns of hyenas, scientists have begun to realize that hyenas choose very carefully who they decide to form bonds with within their clan.
Hyenas are selective in making their friends, and they tend to choose to form bonds with the friends of their friends. This is also known as triadic closure. The textbook defines triadic closure as:
“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.”
The articles also compare hyenas behaviors to that of humans. Users of Facebook also have been proven to “friend” friends of friends, which is triadic closure. It is interesting that both humans and hyenas seem to have this instinct to trust people who their friends approve of. It seems to be a possible survival instinct that is primal in animals, be it humans or hyenas. They seem to take advantage of the pre-approval instead of relying on luck with befriending a stranger. The textbook refers to this as a “basis for trusting each other that an arbitrary pair of unconnected people might lack”.
It is interesting that the triadic closure seems to affect a hyena clan’s networking under all circumstances. The triadic closure affects the clan’s social structure more than the environment that the clan lives in. This really demonstrates the effectiveness of the triadic closure in all interpersonal and connection situations.
http://www.futurity.org/hyenas-social-networks-922882/
http://www.deccanherald.com/content/500949/hyenas-their-own-facebook-algorithm.html