I can’t think of an animal that has belief systems that they share with each other. I agree with the argument in the book Sapiens, that these belief systems are what allow us to collaborate and trust individuals outside of our tribe.
I can’t think of an animal that has belief systems that they share with each other. I agree with the argument in the book Sapiens, that these belief systems are what allow us to collaborate and trust individuals outside of our tribe.
1. Belief/religion: there's an experiment I heard about where researchers put a banana in a tree but monkeys got shocked if they went for it. So the monkeys stopped trying to get that banana. And then the researchers gradually replaced each monkey with one who'd never been shocked. The new monkeys also never went for the tree banana, having picked up on the superstition from their group.
2. Organizations are just like packs or pods, not all of which are genetically based in nature.
3. Money is an interesting one. I'm not aware of animals even bartering or trading objects with each other, but I also wouldn't be surprised to hear it happens. It sounds like there are cases in the wild of animals trading sex for objects though. The oldest profession just got a lot older.