Moreover, as anti-predator response strategies are often costly and may involve an element of risk, the experience to discern when such strategies should be implemented would have critical energetic and survival benefits for individual group members. Ī key facet of ecological knowledge that is more amenable to experimental investigation is the ability to respond appropriately to the threat of predators. about the location of scarce resources or migration routes), but direct tests of this in natural populations are lacking because of the difficulties in quantifying the relevant skills. In animal societies, it has most often been suggested that older leaders provide a vital source of ecological knowledge (e.g. ![]() Indeed, research on humans indicates that age is correlated with leadership in domains that require specialized knowledge, and there is recent evidence that decisions about social conflicts improve with age despite declines in many forms of cognitive processing. Mathematical models of group decision-making have indicated that it may pay individuals in small groups to accept the decision of a knowledgeable leader where large disparities exist in the information possessed by different group members. One situation in which individuals may gain from following a leader is if older leaders possess some form of superior knowledge enabling better decisions in response to environmental or social triggers. Understanding the benefits to individual group members of accepting a leader's decision is critical to uncovering the evolutionary basis of leadership, and hence increasing our knowledge of the role leaders play in human and animal societies. Leaders are therefore increasingly seen as important in coordinating social organization, and there is now growing interest in parallels between leadership in humans and animals that suggest common evolutionary origins, with the same morphological and behavioural traits predicting leadership across species. Our study provides the first empirical evidence that individuals within a social group may derive significant benefits from the influence of an older leader because of their enhanced ability to make crucial decisions about predatory threat, generating important insights into selection for longevity in cognitively advanced social mammals.ĭespite theoretical predictions that democratic decision-making should predominate in animal groups, it is becoming clear that specific leaders commonly appear to guide the actions of other group members. Sensitivity to this key threat increases with matriarch age and is greatest for the oldest matriarchs, who are likely to have accumulated the most experience. ![]() ![]() While groups consistently adjust their defensive behaviour to the greater threat of three roaring lions versus one, families with younger matriarchs typically under-react to roars from male lions despite the severe danger they represent. Here, we use a novel playback paradigm to demonstrate that in African elephants ( Loxodonta africana), age affects the ability of matriarchs to make ecologically relevant decisions in a domain critical to survival-the assessment of predatory threat. The value of age is well recognized in human societies, where older individuals often emerge as leaders in tasks requiring specialized knowledge, but what part do such individuals play in other social species? Despite growing interest in how effective leadership might be achieved in animal social systems, the specific role that older leaders may play in decision-making has rarely been experimentally investigated.
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