Listen to part of a lecture in a biology class.
Ok, so, many animals benefit from living in groups. It provides them with protection from predators and with social companionship. So it’s important for these animals to maintain their group’s unity. They need ways to either avoid conflicts or if they do occur to resolve them peacefully. To help them achieve this, many animals use what are called display behaviors. These are behaviors that are mostly for show, symbolic behaviors that send a message to the other animals and help maintain their group’s unity. One way is through the use of threatening display behaviors. Threatening display behaviors are used to communicate a warning but they aren’t meant to really harm other animals; rather they help animals avoid fights. Some monkeys, like Baboons for instance, frequently use threatening display behaviors. Like, well let’s say, two Baboons find some fruit and they both want it. One Baboon, maybe the first Baboon to see the fruit, might stare at the other one and make threatening noises, grunts to let the other Baboon know it wants the fruit. Because the other Baboon understands the meaning of stares and grunts, it can give up the fruit without a fight. And this behavior benefits the group by preventing conflict. But sometimes physical fights do occur and animals need a way to reconcile afterwards to make up to ensure that everyone in the group continues to get along. In these cases, an animal might use friendly display behavior to restore group unity. Let’s return to the Baboon example. Let’s say the two Baboons do end up getting into a physical fight over the fruit. After the conflict, the two animals need a way to resolve things. So what they do is approach each other while making friendly noises and may even hug each other as if to say everything is ok now, I’m not angry with you anymore. And through this friendly display behaviors, friendly noises or hugs, the Baboons can make up and the group can go back to normal.