| סיכום: | Group-living creates stresses that, all else equal, naturally lead to group fragmentation, and
hence loss of the benefits that group-living provides. How species that live in large stable
groups counteract these forces is not well understood. I use comparative data on grooming
networks and cognitive abilities in primates to show that living in large, stable groups has
involved a series of structural solutions designed to create chains of ‘friendship’ (friends-offriends effects), increased investment in bonding behaviours (made possible by dietary
adjustments) to ensure that coalitions work effectively, and neuronally expensive cognitive
skills of the kind known to underpin social relationships in humans. The first ensures that
individuals synchronise their activity cycles; the second allows the stresses created by groupliving to be defused; and the third allows a large number of weak ties to be managed. Between
them, these create a form of multilevel sociality based on strong versus weak ties similar to
that found in human social networks. In primates, these strategies appear successively at quite
specific group sizes, suggesting that they are solutions to ‘glass ceilings’ that would otherwise
limit the range of group sizes that animals can live in (and hence the habitats they can occupy) This sequence maps closely onto the grades now known to underpin the Social Brain
Hypothesis and the fractal pattern that is known to optimise information flow round networks.
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