Which Animals Make the Best Teams?
March 23rd, 2009An odd title, I know. Quite a while ago now I wrote a blog entry titled Team Building the Elephant Way, borne of my love for elephants. So when I saw this article on the BBC News web site about bees and ants being real team players, I thought immediately that its detail added to my previous entry and that I should therefore write a little about it here.
The essence of the articles is that it distinguishes between two types of animal group behaviour that on the surface look almost identical. One type is motivated by selfishness while the other by a natural, in-built desire for the common good. Many animals can be seen to effectively “swarm” as a means to offer protection from larger predators. One of the most obvious examples are schools of fish that swim closely together to provide protection from sharks and the like. On the face of it, there is little difference between fish and bees, who also gather collectively when threatened, However, what the researchers – scientists from Edinburgh and Oxford Universities – found is that bees and ants have very different motivations behind their similar looking behaviours.
Individuals in a fish swarm not only recognise the importance of sticking together, they also recognise that being in the middle is the safest place to be and do their best to get there. The strongest tend to achieve this with the weakest being picked off if any are. The same happens with other animals such as bison and other cattle. Bees and ants, on the other hand, co-operate to mount the strongest defence they can with those most capable of protecting the group as a whole naturally moving to the outside to defend with the best strength the group can muster.
Now I know that these are simply two different, natural mechanisms to help a species survive over time. I appreciate that they are formed over millions of years of evolution and I am not expecting any fish reading this to change its behaviour and think “Ok, I want first crack at Jaws next time”, but most of our blog readers are intelligent, thinking beings who really can consider the upsides to the bees and ants shared approach.
Whereas fish and bison under threat are driven by personal survival, group survival is actually better served by the approach taken by the bees and ants. For them, those most suited to the front line accept their responsibility without reservation and do their jobs to the best of their abilities. In doing so, they maximise the chances of group survival and minimise the amount of damage done to their community.
That’s what I call true team behaviour and I would like to think that our team building options help teams achieve something similar. Food for thought in these difficult times?
