Communication

Abstract

Whereas predictability in the physical environment, or habitat, is generated through the explorations of the individual, in the social environment predictability is created and maintained through social behavior. The habitat characteristics are learned, but the social milieu is not only learned, but also created by the individual. To the individual a reduction of ambiguity or the creation of predictability increases its reproductive fitness by permitting it to follow the course least likely to be costly in precious nutrients and energy and least likely to lead to the death of the individual. It can also be adaptive to an individual—as we shall see—to reduce predictability to another and benefit by the mistakes of its aroused, indecisive, opponents. Predictability is generated by the individual’s precise knowledge of each companion’s combat potential, as well as the signals emitted by each companion, so as to correctly anticipate and avoid or, alternatively, to provoke specific actions from them. Individuals must know when active competition is futile and alternative means of maximizing reproduction are more profitable. Predictability of the social milieu permits the developing animal to maximize its growth and development by developing strategies that enable it to get maximum nutrition and maternal care, even though it is in the parent’s interest to pay out as little as possible in support and still have a viable offspring (Divers 1974). The predictability of the social milieu is created by social behavior, through the mechanisms of cognitive pattern matching discussed earlier. Thus, communication is the evolutionary solution to the law of least effort, the rule that individuals must maintain homeostasis, create access to scarce resources, and choose the best possible—or the greatest number—of mating partners.