Social bonds may help group-living mammals reduce their risk of starvation or being eaten by predators, letting them live longer.
When evolutionary biologist Xuming Zhou of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing was studying the longest-lived mammals to understand the evolution of longevity, he took particular note of naked mole-rats . The rodents are exceptionally long-lived, sometimes reaching over 30 years of age. They also live in huge, complex, subterranean societies. In contrast, other rodents like golden hamsters , which are solitary, live to only about four years.
The researchers compiled information from the scientific literature on the social organization of 974 mammal species. They then split these species into three categories: solitary, pair-living and group-living. When the researchers compared these three groups with data on the mammals’ known longevity, they found that group-living mammals tended to live longer than the solitary species — roughly 22 years compared with nearly 12 years in solitary mammals.
“We were so surprised, because individuals who live in groups also face a lot of costs, such as competition for potential mating partners and food,” Zhou says. Frequent social contact in group settings can also encourage the spread of infectious disease.But there are benefits to living in a group too, he says, such as banding together for protection against predators.
Evolutionary biologist Laurent Keller of the University of Lausanne in Switzerland lauds the study for the sheer size of the sampling effort. “But it would have been useful to be a bit more precise about different levels of sociality.” There are more variations of social organization within the three categories used in the study, he says, and the relative degree of sociality could influence any patterns you see.
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