Teamwork makes the dream work! That is the famous saying, and it is not only a view held by humans. Animals collaborate to achieve common goals too! Read on to discover some of the best team players in the animal kingdom!
10: Cheetahs
All cheetahs are team players at some point in their lives. When mother cheetahs first leave their cubs to fend for themselves at 16 months of age, the siblings will stick together for a little bit. Cheetah litters can be as large as eight individuals, but, on average, four make it to adulthood. These little groups are made up of both males and females, and the females take on the majority of the hunting whilst the males are there for added protection from predators. The females, who seem to get the short end of the stick, leave the group at 18 months of age to go and find their own territories and live a solitary life. The males, meanwhile, will stick together, sometimes forming lifelong coalitions which allow them to take down larger prey and to hold larger territories with more females.
Sometimes, unrelated males form coalitions too, the largest group of these being the Tano Bora coalition of five individuals in the Masai Mara. Whilst they may be able to take down larger prey, cheetahs that hunt in coalitions actually eat the same amount of food per week as cheetahs that hunt alone. This suggests that the benefit to teamwork may not lie in the food they eat, but the territory that they are able to maintain. Through teamwork, these cheetahs are able to hold onto larger patches of land, increasing their likelihood of reproductive success!
9: Lions
Lions are probably the most famous of feline team workers, but did you know that there are actually two separate teams at work within a lion pride? Lions and lionesses may live together, but they form two separate groups within a pride, each with very different roles. Lionesses will hang out with their mothers and sisters, hunting beside them and creating creches to protect cubs from wandering males. They will rarely leave a pride, forming lifelong bonds with their family. Meanwhile, male lions sometimes join together in small groups of brothers, patrolling the territory and defending the lionesses from external threats. Being a part of a ‘bachelor group’ is beneficial for male lions in the beginning of their lives, giving young males more strength to fight resident males for dominance over a pride. Being in a group also allows males to gain control over more than one pride, as different males in the coalition can move between them. Overall, teamwork can help male lions to ensure that they continue their genetic line.
8: African wild dogs
African wild dogs are no stranger to hard work. These motivated canines pursue their prey over 2km for an hour, in order to wear them out! The stamina of these dogs and their effectiveness at working as a pack is what makes them such successful hunters. Up to 90% of chases end up in a kill, which is an extraordinarily high number in comparison to other predators. Wild dogs live in a hierarchical society, where all the group members help to care for the dominant pair’s litter, by feeding and protecting them. The strong bonds of the pack and the high success rate of their hunts mean that they can raise large litters successfully to adulthood. These litters consist of up to ten pups, which is more than any other canids.
Another example of the incredible teamwork that these dogs participate in, is their voting system. African wild dogs will decide when to go on a hunt through sneezing. When an individual dog sneezes, it means that they are ready to start hunting. If a more dominant individual begins the sneezing session, only three sneezes are needed to start the hunt, but a sneeze by a more subordinate individual will need to be matched by nine more sneezes for the hunt to begin! Through teamwork and also democracy, wild dogs have created a successful pack structure!
7: Meerkats
Meerkat families are famous for their teamwork. Their hierarchical societies are well disciplined and ferocious. A meerkat family is not just a team, it is an army! Meerkats are led by a dominant pair, who will be the mother and father of most of the group. This is the only pair able to breed, a rule enforced by the matriarch with brutal punishment if broken. As the other adults in the pack are unable to breed, they instead invest their efforts in looking after the matriarch’s babies, ensuring more meerkat pups will reach adulthood. Group members will collectively feed pups whilst out foraging and will babysit the pups back at the den whilst the matriarch looks for food. Living in a group also has benefits for the subordinate meerkats, as whilst they are feeding, some are available to stand on sentry duty and look for predators. Once predators have been spotted, they sound an alarm call, allowing for all the meerkats to escape back into their burrows.
Meerkats don’t just work in teams to defend themselves from predators, but also from other meerkat families. Meerkats will fight outsiders, sometimes killing each other in the process. They do so in order to defend a territory, something of great importance in their arid desert environment. Despite the dark side of meerkat families, they can also be very tender towards each other, taking time in the morning and evening to groom each other and reinstate social bonds.
6: Honey bees
Honey Bees have very well organised societies, with a rigid social structure and castes. Worker bees are arguably the most important component of the bee-hive, collectively cleaning and polishing cells, feeding the brood, caring for the queen, removing debris, building combs, guarding the entrance of the hive and keeping it ventilated. Once the bee is a bit older, its primary role in bee society will change to being a nectar gatherer, bringing food back from outside the hive. Meanwhile, the queen lays eggs and releases pheromones that keep the hive working together.
In order to communicate, the bee workers use both chemical and physical signals. If a bee has found a good food source, it may communicate this to its colleagues by doing a ‘waggle dance’. If the bee colony is made up of good team-workers, it may grow in size until it contains up to 60,000 individuals! This is supposed to be the optimum size that a bee colony can grow to. Whether or not the bees are good teamworkers largely depends on the queen as different queen bees produce workers with very different temperaments.
5: Ants
Like bees, ant colonies are a caste society, made up of queens, drones and workers. Worker ants begin their life deep inside the nest, looking after the queen and maintaining the colony. As they age, their jobs change to those further from the queen’s chamber, before finally taking them outside the colony in search of food. To a larger extent than bees, ants do have the ability to choose their tasks based on personal preferences. This certain level of freedom might be why they have been so successful at colonising a multitude of different habitats, including our city streets. The roles that an ant plays in the colony are varied, and most of them require teamwork. Being such a small insects, is it any wonder that they have to join forces?
Wood ant colonies get so big that they can be seen as large mounds in woodlands and forests. The mounds are a testament to the ants’ collective teamwork. They also gang up to protect the colony from predators. If a bird swoops over the nest, the ants synchronously begin shooting acid from their thorax to deter the predator. This can be a very effective deterrent, showing that once again, teamwork can save the day.
weaver ants are so-called for their ability to construct nests by weaving together leaves . While the workers join forces the hold the leaves together, others bind them using silk from their larvae. The
Army ants can create a nest out of their own bodies called a bivouac, which shields the queen and her eggs. Together, army ant soldiers make formidable enemies and are capable of taking down small vertebrate animals! The constant teamwork of the colony enables them to have a nomadic lifestyle, moving from place to place as their colony grows, carrying their larvae with them! These ants are so organised they can even create living bridges over gaps in the forest floor and water bodies, allowing the rest of the colony to safely cross.
Leafcutter ants spend their days farming fungi on which to feed their grubs. These strong animals collect leaves from trees, cutting pieces off with their sharp mandibles and carrying them into the nest. They can be seen moving up and down trees in queues, working together to harvest as many leaves as possible. Through teamwork, these ants have managed to master agriculture!
4: Humpback Whale
From small to large, many animals work in teams to get things done. The giant humpback whale is known for a specialised hunting strategy called ‘bubble netting’ that requires working in groups. As many as 20 humpback whales can take part. When a bait ball of fish is encountered, the whales vocalise to each other, to co-ordinate their positions. Then the whales heard the fish by blowing bubbles, circling the bait ball so that their prey is trapped in a rotating net of bubbles that they cannot penetrate.
The size of the nets can be as large as thirty metres. Once all the fish are corralled into a small space, one whale will make a feeding call and rush upwards, signalling for the others to do the same with their mouths open. Many fish will be caught in this way and sometimes the bait ball can be decimated. Bubble netting is a learned behaviour and not all humpback whales know how to do it. The whales teach each other and must communicate effectively and co-ordinate their movement to have any chance of success.
3: Birds
A classic example of the power of teamwork in animals is the remarkable survival strategy of Emperor penguins. These birds live in one of the most extreme habitats on earth, where winter temperatures plummet to -45°C, wind speeds can reach up to 200km/h, and for many weeks during the Antarctic winter, the sun never rises. The huddle is their secret weapon against the cold. By sticking together in large aggregations, they share their body heat and stabilize their own core temperature in the process.
But it’s not just birds of the same species that work as a team. Different species have been known to collaborate to scare off a predator! Some of these species may be competitors for food sources, but as soon as a bigger danger presents itself, the birds team up to scare it off. This behaviour, known as ‘mobbing’ is often seen in corvids, such as crows and magpies. They may even mob birds of prey that present little direct danger to them. The removal of a predator from the area means the defenders’ chicks will be safer. Birds also make alarm calls when predators (or people) walk past. This is another means of ruining the predators’ element of surprise and also helps to alert other animals in the area that there is something dangerous about! In this case, teamwork literally saves lives!
2: Fish
They say opposites attract, and it’s defintitely true for the moray eel and peacock grouper, whose differences make them perfect partners in crime. Each fish has a different hunting method: the grouper chases fish in open water, whilst the eel slinks through crevices in rocks where fish may be hiding. First the grouper will approach the eel and shake it’s head a couple of centimetres from the eels face. This is an invitation to go and hunt. If the eel accepts, it will leave its crevice and swim with the grouper. Fish will dart away from the grouper to hide in cracks in the coral, but the eel will pursue them, chasing them out or eating them. Sometimes the fish gets way, and the grouper will be waiting.
Despite it being unclear at the start of the hunt whether the grouper or the eel will have the fullest belly, both are more successful hunting together than they are alone, making their teamwork more than worthwhile.
1: Humans
Make no mistake, we too are animals and teamwork plays a very important role in human society. Evidence of bones healing in early humans after injury suggests that teamwork has always been integral to human society. Animals in the wild will often die as a result of their injuries, due to not being able to forage or fend for themselves. Our culture of caring for the sick and old has continued into modern society, and we can even apply our teamworking instincts to more wide-ranging things. The conservation of animals and the environment expands across borders, arbitrary lines that the animals do not see. To conserve a species globally requires international collaboration, campaigning, politics, hard work and research. We can all have a role and work together to conserve our environment, our planet and the people around us. Teamwork makes the dream work.
