250 POTENTIAL BETWEEN BRAINSalready evolved highly complex cognitive systems for dealing with non-
social environments. Social groupings of cognitive systems, already so
advanced, generated possibilities for social cognition far greater than in
the ants or birds. Th e results depend on how much of that adaptability is
actually brought into group dynamics.
Th e answer seems to be quite a lot in some species, not so much in
others. Social cooperative hunting as a major survival strategy is promi-
nent in a number of species of canids (wild dogs) and felids (wild cats).
Th e main advantage is better success at catching bigger prey, which would
be far beyond the capabilities of individuals. Among the social canids,
cape (African) hunting dogs have been well studied for their habit of
running down prey through divisions of labor, surrounding the prey,
strategic delays, and other tactics of organ ization. Similar patterns are
observed in wolves and lions.^16
Above all, social cooperative hunting in mammals brings individually
adaptable cognitive systems into joint action. Th at means far wider pos-
sibilities in the dynamics of the group. For example, the dynamics can
incorporate deeper environmental structure, because the individual
brains can cope with it. Th at implies epicognitive regulations far more
complex than in ants, fi sh, or birds.
Whether this entails increments of cognitive ability over and above
that in nonsocial species is, however, uncertain. One approach has been
to examine whether there has been some refl ection in brain size and
structure. Even in wolves and lions, however, teasing out the eff ects on
brain size of social factors from those of nonsocial factors is not
straightforward.
For example, across species generally, brain size increases with body
size and increased innervation. It is also related to other aspects of habit,
such as diet, and also be hav ior. However, mammal species with larger
brains tend to survive better when introduced to novel environments.^17
Carnivores generally have increased size in the frontal cortex compared
with other mammals. Th is is thought to refl ect the extra demands on
cognition of even solitary hunting. Socially cooperative carnivores have
been reported as having even bigger brains, but not vastly diff er ent from
corresponding nonsocial species. We can presume that such an incre-
ment, if it exists, would have involved changes to aff ective or aff ective-
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