Previous posts on this thread referred to identifying good human governments, but even elephant government appears to feature stability, as noted on Discover Magazine‘s D-brief blog:
Wittemyer and Goldenberg were particularly interested in how elephant social networks responded if a matriarch was killed. What happens when a matriarch’s wisdom and social skills suddenly vanish from a group? To see how elephants responded to dramatic changes, they combed through data collected from roughly 100 elephants during a 16-year period between 1998 and 2014 .
All four matriarchs that Wittemyer started watching nearly two decades ago were killed during that time period. In fact, just 30 percent of the elephants that were alive in 1998 were still alive in 2014, due to the impacts of poaching and a devastating drought. Surprisingly, the elephants’ social structures remained intact, and here’s why: After matriarchs were killed, their daughters stepped up to maintain the extended relationships their mothers had formed with other elephants.
Additionally, the daughters reached out to old acquaintances from their bond and clan groups to renew relationships and reconstruct their core and bond groups. Ultimately, the daughters reconfigured their social networks until they reflected the structure that was in place prior to a matriarch’s death. In other words, younger female elephants kept their mothers’ legacies alive, and, more importantly, prevented social collapse.
I wonder if we could learn from their example sometimes.
