page_title: Sociality
section_title: Solitary but social
hierarchical_section_title: Sociality / Presociality / Solitary but social
caption_attribution_description: Microcebus murinus English: Gray Mouse Lemur at Artis Zoo, Amsterdam, Netherlands.
context_page_description: Sociality is the degree to which individuals in an animal population tend to associate in social groups and form cooperative societies.
  Sociality is a survival response to evolutionary pressures. For example, when a mother wasp stays near her larvae in the nest, parasites are less likely to eat the larvae. Biologists suspect that pressures from parasites and other predators selected this behavior in wasps of the family Vespidae.
  This wasp behaviour evidences the most fundamental characteristic of animal sociality: parental investment. Parental investment is any expenditure of resources to benefit one's offspring. Parental investment detracts from a parent's capacity to invest in future reproduction and aid to kin. An animal that cares for its young but shows no other sociality traits is said to be subsocial.
  An animal that exhibits a high degree of sociality is called a social animal. The highest degree of sociality recognized by sociobiologists is eusociality. A eusocial taxon is one that exhibits overlapping adult generations, reproductive division of labor, cooperative care of young, and—in the most refined cases—a biological caste system.
context_section_description: Solitary-but-social animals forage separately, but some individuals sleep in the same location or share nests. The home ranges of females usually overlap, whereas those of males do not. Males usually do not associate with other males, and male offspring are usually evicted upon maturity. Among primates, this form of social organization is most common among the nocturnal strepsirrhine species and tarsiers. Solitary-but-social species include mouse lemurs, lorises, and orangutans.
  Some individual cetaceans adopt a solitary but social behavior, that is, they live apart from their own species but interact with humans. This behavior has been observed in species including bottlenose dolphin, common dolphin, striped dolphin, beluga, Risso's dolphin, and orca. Notable individuals include Pelorus Jack (1888–1912), Tião (1994–1995), and Fungie (1983–). At least 32 solitary-sociable dolphins were recorded between 2008 and 2019.
caption: The mouse lemur is a nocturnal, solitary-but-social lemur native to Madagascar.
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