Final answer:
Animal societies contribute to individual evolutionary fitness by allowing for cooperation, which improves survival and reproduction chances. Examples include wolves hunting as a pack and social insects working to support reproductive members, thus ensuring their shared genetics are passed on.
Step-by-step explanation:
An animal society can significantly contribute to an individual animal's evolutionary fitness, which is an organism's ability to survive and reproduce, thereby passing its genes to the next generation. Social behaviors such as cooperation within a group allow animals to perform tasks they couldn't accomplish alone, like hunting in packs or carrying large items. Additionally, animal communication is critical for locating food, defending against predators, mating, and caring for offspring, thus increasing an individual's chance of survival and reproduction.
For example, when wolves hunt together in a pack, their collective strength and strategy improve their chances of catching prey, thus increasing their individual fitness. Similarly, in societies of social insects like bees or ants, even non-reproductive members contribute to the survival of the colony through behaviors such as feeding and protecting the reproductive queen, thereby ensuring their shared genes are passed on. This inclusive fitness through kin selection shows how even altruistic behaviors can evolve and increase overall genetic success within a population.