Dear Leyla,

I am not sure if you find this relevant but schooling fish tend to avoid conspecific individuals that show different/aberrant behaviour. For example some parasites induce behavioural changes in fish which cause avoidance by conspecifics (eg. Barber et al. 2000 Rev Fish Biol Fisheries 10: 131-165; Krause & Ruxton 2002. Living in groups. Oxford). A general explanation for group avoidance and/or aggression towards aberrant individuals is that they can potentially disrupt the anti-predator benefits of the group, for example by reducing the vigilance of the group and/or making it more conspicuous to predators. Thus avoidance and/or group aggression against "outlaws" and other abberrant individuals may in some cases have evolved as a response to predation pressure, although this is probably less likely in top-predators like wolves which was one of your examples. To what extent this explanation is relevant for humans I do not know, this may be a bit speculative. However, predation pressure from large predators was likely one of the main reasons (the other was cooperative hunting) that our ancestors formed increasingly larger groups when adapting to the open savannah so...

Best wishes

Jörgen

Dear Leyla,

you might be interested in having a look on Google Scholar typing for example "punishment AND social insect AND fertility". Social insects researchers went (and are still going) in depth on the topic of conflicts of interests, and in some way an individual developing ovaries in a queenright colonies can be seen as a sort of rebel. Thus, "how social insects perceive and react to colony members showing fertility associated traits" may be a starting point to face this topic in social insects. Social insect colonies are indeed full of conflict of interest (see for example Ratnieks et al. 2006 in Ann. Rev. Entomology) . Indeed, insects societies show high levels of sociality, sometimes resembling the crowded and complex human societies. However, my personal opinion is to be very very careful in drawing any comparison among humans and (the other) animals!

Hope it helps,

best wishes,

Ale

Dear Alessandro:

Thank you very much for your suggestion. I am about to compose a paper about "the important lesson you've got in life" in form of an autoehtnodrama- staged research-.Very unscientifically but still interestingly, I found similarities between the a wolf pack which turned against a rebel omega wolf and some of my "very educated family members" regarding their common reaction towards "an odd one"., namely, trying to 'expell' the culprid, at least emotionally or should we say "instinctively". Therefore, I was wondering whether in hierarchical human socieities , the reaction towards the 'weak, odd,aberrant" individuals experience a similar reaction from their immediate environment. like in hierarchical (especially) mammal groups. My observation is rather "emotional, or artistic" than scientific, and its is valid since it would be an "art-combined with research" piece and an autobiographical staging. However, I still wanted to know, whether the similarities I have observed have a scientific validity or not, since it is an academic assignment anyway. Thanks,