Grouping in a Vervet Monkey Troop.

Joel Cohen

Expert InsightsPublished 1968

A summary of a monograph, in preparation, on stochastic models of the formation of casual groups in human and nonhuman primate societies. Data were obtained from observation of the composition of the sleeping groups of a particular troop of vervet monkeys on 22 nights, individual by individual. Neither a mixture of human-like truncated Poisson processes nor various combinatorial models satisfactorily describe the observed behavior. A family of stochastic models called the linear one-step transition (LOST) models do account, not only for the vervet monkey data, but also for various other distributions, both human and monkey. Explicit models of social organization backed by sufficient data can contribute to clearer language and more useful concepts for comparative and evolutionary discussions of human and nonhuman societies. 7 pp. Refs.

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Cohen, Joel, Grouping in a Vervet Monkey Troop. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 1968. https://www.rand.org/pubs/papers/P3896.html.
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