(by Bill Joslin ) —“One consideration. With interspecies cooperation, for exam

(by Bill Joslin )

—“One consideration. With interspecies cooperation, for example, badgers and coyote are hunting groundhogs together, the overall chance of killing game increases for both over the long term. This gives the incentive to tolerate a competitor. The notion of cooperation born of outgroup warfare presupposes an outgroup which is already cooperating.

The distinction between non-cooperative social species (deer, apes, monkeys) and cooperative social species rests with resource gathering.

Non-cooperative social species do not cooperate in resource gathering. Each provides for themselves but do so in a proximity to others. This reduces the chance of death due to predation (run faster than your mate). This fits your above model – defense against outgroup threats.

Cooperative social species work collectively to gather resources with a rudimentary division of labor (Wolves hunting in a pack – rely on each other for survival – a deeper form of cooperation). In these cases pack size increases and decreases in proportion to the success of the pack. Caloric access would stand as a bigger driver.

Familial structure and development of reason may provide some indication as to which applies to humans. Cooperative social species tend to have more developed “mind reading” than non-cooperative, and will seek out help from another. Social structure forms around the family structure as a single unit (mother, father, juvenile offspring, young offspring) oppose to harems.

This suggests to me that human lines were different than current primates in that we may have been predators (cooperative social animals) while they remain predominate scavengers with occasional hunting.

One other which comes to mind is interspecies cooperation, for example, coyotes and badgers hunting ground hogs (badgers are good at digging but not chasing escaped ground hogs – coyotes are better at chasing than digging.) Resource gathering and collective gains over the long run affords an incentive for each to tolerate the proximity of a “competitor” (tolerate each other) to the extent that they cooperate.

There seem to be two different incentive sets which result in cooperation as a survival strategy.

The later (cooperative social species) I think has a direct and stronger incentives to develop cooperative strategies, whereas the former tends to demonstrate looser ingroup bonds (loose half your troop to defection after a lost battle with a competitor).

These differing strategies may have converged in humans.”—