Animal Decision Making Process

In nature, the decision-making process is probably one of the most vital to a species existence. Each decision made could be as important as the difference between life and death. Natural selection states that the fittest organisms will survive and pass on their genes. Not only do the same genes get passed on from parent to offspring, but optimist theorists suggest that that the most favorable or, “optimal” genes are passed down. With this established, they believe in an “ optimizing selection process, generating decision processes that result in approximately optimal outcomes. Therefore, animals that use decision processes or strategies approaching the optimum outcome transfer more genes to future generations”. Meaning that those who practiced decision-making processes tended to pass on more to their next generations, making them the fittest in their environment. Often, when observing the actions of even small species like bees, one can see a complex structure of how they make decisions in their living arrangements. Bees search for potential sites, campaign and vote for the best site for their hive. When a quorum is reached, the whole hive travels to the site agreed upon. It is quite interesting to discover that such a process takes place. And even brings to mind the parallels to human …show more content…
To do this I will be having groups of individuals vote both alone and together, and analyze the data to see if the results changed after group debate. The group debate will be the combined decision because as they are talking and interacting amongst each other, but separately carrying out the decision. From the prominence of group decision making in our evolutionary history, it can be assumed that humans like other social animals will be influenced by the decisions of others when deciding to take a stance on a particular