[paul.fr]

or have "we" always done so? If not, what happened, to make us want to live with our family members?

[blakestyger]

Some animals are social, some are not. What's the chance that humans (or their precursors) started as one and became the other? Being social and cooperative is probably a function of brain organisation and would be inheritable.

[LeeE]

I think a lot of it comes down to how many offspring are produced by each individual and how long the offspring need to become independent and able to support and fend for themselves.

If relatively few offspring are produced per individual the relative worth of the biological investment in each offspring is very high; too high to casually discard.  Therefore the investment made in the offspring has to be protected and nurtured and when that investment needs to be protected for several years it wouldn't be viable for a single individual, or pair of individuals.  This is not only because of the high work-load, but also because of the risk of harm or injury to the isolated parents, upon whom the offspring are totally dependent, during that time.

Social groups mitigate against risks to the individual parents and enable the workload to be shared, and I suspect that they are part of the evolutionary process that resulted in high-dependency offspring - that is, high-dependency offspring wouldn't have been viable without social grouping to support them.

Of course, that isn't to say that social groups only occur where the offspring are few and highly dependent for a long time, just that they could be required for the types of animal where the offspring are highly dependent for along time.

[nicephotog]

blakestyger : "a function of brain organisation"
Is that simply an extravagant way of saying "the idiosyncratic instinct of this particular creature" based on the attributable brain features that identify the animal.
Or to abbreviate the same this instinctive attribute belongs to this animal.
...I think this way because i am this Animal...

Some of the animals i have had either cat or dog have been confused about particular features of their own being as learned.
My black dog in the mid eighties was "a top dog"(Alpha/boss) but he squatted like a female to urinate unless marking territory.
Cats have had the problem they did not understand as kittens they were not dogs after losing their mother and would follow the bitch(blue heeler x cocker spaniel) around that they slept with on the veranda.Surrogation, something the alike best occur is the implication, alike a drive.

These are animals not humans, and the best easiest description impressionisation/instinct of mind "relating forming family groups" supports a non learned status but a highly instinctive requirement to bond with ones own species and cooperate(an incentive gained by being required to be useful and participate for survival , a domino effect of cause and effect from solving the problem of proximity - to meeting - to learning to participation with rank as cooperation), the recommendation by people whom have the data and practical on raising dogs as either pet or work dog or for "keeping" believe that to raise a puppy requires the pup you have taken home to be supervised regularly near an adult dog to remove what they call "human imprint upon the animal"(as i had mentioned the(probably) mother bitches imprint was left on my black dog in the way it urinated).

If you meant the modern context of segregation from others, it is more a point of not requiring to live among others because of economic ability or as you notice with those in poverty that starts to reoccur in being multiple family units in the same living space.

[blakestyger]

blakestyger : "a function of brain organisation"
Is that simply an extravagant way of saying "the idiosyncratic instinct of this particular creature" based on the attributable brain features that identify the animal.

No, it is a simple way of saying it.

[nicephotog]

blakestyger : ..."No, it is a simple way of saying it."...

Please elaborate, brain function by hereditory installation........
direct instinct or a drive to learn??? and how it integrates!!!
please.
I invest a large quantity of what will be there harnessable in canis.stop.

incidently of interest 03-12-08:
from: http://www.cais-soas.com/CAIS/Animals/dog.htm
Pre-Islamic myths:
According to the Bundahishn, all animals were created from the purified semen of the primordial bull. Ten varieties of dog are mentioned, of which only the guard dog, the sheep dog, and the hunting dog can properly be considered dogs. The dog is said to have been created to protest man's possessions against wolves; in its opposition to evil it cooperates with the cock and is able to repel evil by its mere gaze.

In ancient Persian folk etymology the word sag (dog) was derived from seh-yak (one third) because one third of its essence is human.
[Canids contain 75% karyotypes of human DNA]
...
As the yanks say, cute huh!?
...
BUT, if you want a true contention of how grouping occurs based on simpler life-forms as a templateAccording to a famous tale in the Shah-nama and other sources, Bahram was awakened to the oppression of his tyrannical vezier as a result of witnessing a shepherd's treatment of his treacherous sheep dog, which, having grown enamored of a shewolf, was allowing the latter to ravage his master's flocks.

[blakestyger]

nicephotog, I don't really see what you are trying to say - there's lots of contradiction here. For instance, you ask when humans started to live in families but refer extensively to animals then make the distinction between humans and animals...when humans are animals.

Canids do share 75% of karyotypes with us - but bananas share 40%. Genes code for proteins, nothing more. Sharing them doesn't mean there will be similarities in the phenotype.

[nicephotog]

I didn't ask the question, "Paul" asked the question.

If i really volunteered an answer as "p/said to be" i personally would use prehistory more than medical biology, and as above some descript example of common behavioral symptomatical attributes among living things *able to form family groups from the requirement of the use of intellect to carry out tasks to survive as a natural attribute of their being e.g. not Amoeba or virus.

* ..."and how long the offspring need to become independent and able to support and fend for themselves"...

* Please elaborate, brain function by hereditory installation........
direct instinct or a drive to learn??? and how it integrates!!!

I can think of quite a few contexts Paul could be asking, but
If you look over pre dynastic(any prehistory family system) dwelling systems where the people were hunter gatherer, its simply there is no where to go to except toward food supplies if people did split up from family groups.
Dynastic management is quite a rude theft of land and property but considered the only answer possible against conflict and crime being accountancy and burocracy enforced for and by the heaviest physically and intellectually enabled group(something has soldiers to use to police).
Dynastic management would enforce(cause) a quantity requirement of family memebers remaining until they sufficiently were known by others dwelling on outlying areas.
If they did not remain they could not be identified to not be enemy, robbers or spys.
   For modern purposes of staying around, economics is often the binding, in some countries it remains alike the Dynastic management.
Groups are mainly only for safety, in a direct family(context parent,sibling,offspring genetically) it is as much safety but you may need to step into the functions of bonding in various instinctive situations and higher decisions to associate.

..."Sharing them doesn't mean there will be similarities in the phenotype"...

No strictly, but for a couple of purposes "in looking more at the sum of the whole" of a complex higher organism(animal as you say) , you can see that social or family groups occur because it is intellect and mechanics of survival cognitively operating with  "a requirement to communicate" to achieve means to end of survival.
As far as brain wiring can be concerned in animals, another set of sub sections of evolved ability require to be achieved to properly cause the requirement to communicate intellectually to mean something.

The first is agility.
The second is mechanical manipulative dexterity(physical manipulation process management in/by sequence).

The first is given to many higher organisms such as kangaroos and sheep or horses(agility).
The second is given to Predators also(agility) and/but/also (physical manipulation process management in/by sequence) manipulative dexterity.

By traversal, exposure to changing and plain different environmental attributes can be achieved, hence agility allows exposure to the mind of many concepts of gaining means to end to be presented in prey animals such as cloven hoofed.

However, The same type of exposure by point of quantity can be achieved from have the ability to modify and manipulate a dwelled environment until the useful concepts of means to end usage for survival are the rate in a small proximate area the numbers traversal presents.
Add the two together , the result of agility and manual manipulative dexterity and it starts to require memory and intellect.

The proposition is that animals in/against the scale of the environment with agility only, have a parasitic grouping drive that is purely for safety, but animals with manipulative dexterity form social groups that do not require the blunt associations of those only with agility. It starts to require intellect, protocol and memory to coexist by that which drives them to congregate and bond because they require "learning and cooperation" to participate.

If you compare a Funnel Web "Atrax Robusta" to a sheep, the funnel web has immense agility and immense manipulative ability.
The sheep only has Agility, not much manipulative ability if any of valid value.
A human has both a huge quantity of agility and Manipulative ability.

These are i suppose the brain functions that you may be mentioning but are tangential and cognitively unexorably related to bonding because complex actions must be coordinated for the purpose of survival even if only agility and swiftness.

With more to be placed in respect of family groups , Wolves date 10 million years and Boriphagin 50 Million years of the cooperative requirements remain in present day wolves that assume no more really than their distant 50 Million year relatives requirements to use both a social structure of ranking and replenishment as a family group of highly sexist individuals that require intellect to cooperate using process and mechanical manipulations.

There are more interesting biometric arguments I have for interspecies cooperation relating Canis in my advert. http://www.nicephotog-jsp.net/Dingone.pdf

When you have more than one higher organism item together , you have a group.
Is technology outdating , specialist pets as the answer to specialist assistance in living?

While you can excuse grouping as replenishment by not attempting a hybrid, The complexities of any one lone higher organism of agility and Manipulative dexterity will require practice of the complex handed down , heirloom, insignia jewelry and protocols.
Funnel webs accomplish that by colonies and having gaurds at particular points related entrance and exits of nests.


To have the type of grouping problem he's asking of you require the beforementioned attributes working cognitively upon the situation.

What the final implication makes is that social grouping is part of higher order animals and more so the higher the order and that it finally rests on ability to modify the surrounding environment.

If you consider wolves(a predator) social group organisation and rabbits(a prey animal and herbivore) social group organisation occur inside much the same environment boundaries of survival actions(digging dens , group association , fossicking , signaling), the scale(size relationship) against the environment is clearly a point of their evolution though they can in general essence share all the same techniques until it reaches food they choose but even that has a similarity.

One particular similarity is their usage mechanics of their noses upon scent. Both rabbits and dogs noses use a system of taking in the atmosphere then for the exhale, closing off the front of the nose and discharging the air through slots on either side of the nose.
They however do not share the mechanics of high speed traversal of creatures with a tail because they do not posses such for sensing heavy wind gusts, but perhaps their ears operate that system for them and for balance since they are built similar to a kangaroo when moving at high speed.
Of ears and high speed traversal,Interestingly in relation to animals with no tail at high speed is the Lynx(Bobcat), it has interesting ears(Lynxs' ear tips) also.

Higher signals of higher order animals are generally just that, signals , with wolves, however, some of their signals are totem signals and memorial exactly as human societies have developed them.
wolves presence in a territory can be thought of exactly alike a provincial governemt, While rabbits do not possess totem-signals, but do have signals, they are not as effectively developed to say any are totem or memorial.
Wolves also derive a crimes being of its value to commit punishments a little more alike humans also(right down to rudeness if you know anything real of them).
Bees use signals that are far more complex than rabbits signals but are only ever just that (a signal) regardless the misleading name queen for their queen-bee.

There are some great BBC programs about wolves on www.youtube.com
but here is a more effective introduction to making a comparison of wolves and rabbits.
http://www.hilltopanimalhospital.com/rabbit%20behavior2.htm

I'm saying finally it something the alike of 500 million years back, rabbits ancestry potentially simply didn't choose to attack something meaty to eat it, and that finalised the difference.

So for humans, it all dictates inter personal cooperation (apart from the standard reptilian drives and birth instincts) must occur because of the intricacy "in a traversal span of environment(to put it crudely distance/area/spacial in an encompassing context)" because of the manual dexterity and because the scale of size of a human against environmental parts (tree height , distance between any species of tree or plant limbs on the trunks , bush height , boulders , rocks , other animals) is optimum to the environments contents for handling it can then immediately complicate the environments exploitation always.
   Why the scaling relates is simply the tensility and jacketing of the contents of a living being for it to move around as the big skeletal and flesh package it is related to manipultable objects in the environment.