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Bejeweled, Warcraft Combine to Form World's Most Addictive Game | Game | Life from Wired.com

Tags: communities on 2008-09-20 -All Annotations (0) -About

more fromblog.wired.com

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Malwebolence - The World of Web Trolling - NYTimes.com

Tags: norms, communities on 2008-08-05 -All Annotations (0) -About

more fromwww.nytimes.com

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Edge: LIONS: AFRICA'S MAGNIFICENT PREDATORS By Nathan Myhrvold

Social loafing in lion hunting

Tags: norms, communities on 2008-04-29 and saved by2 people -All Annotations (0) -About

more fromwww.edge.org

The naturalist George Shaller figured this out in the late 1960s
with the first quantitative field study. He found that a single lion
has a success rate of 15% on a given hunt—or about one successful
hunt for every seven. Two lions have a success of 29%, which is 3%
LESS successful than if the two lions with 15% individual success
hunted by themselves (32.2%). Three lions get 27%,
or 2% less than two lions. Four, five and six lions get 32% - meaning
that they are (finally) as successful as sending two lions out by
themselves. There is clearly no statistical value to hunting in groups
Watching lions hunt, the trends are quite obvious. The primary reason
that groups of lions are no more effective than two by themselves
is that typically only two lions do the actual hunting. They all
make a show of hunting, but in the cases I watched, in several different
prides, there were always a couple females that were the most aggressive
and took the lead. The others hang back for the hard part then rush
up at the end after the worst danger is over. Their primary goal
is to be at the kill early so they can eat, not to actually help.
Field studies have confirmed that lions do not seem to keep track
of this and punish slackers.
After watching
hunt after hunt fail, you soon decide that Iions are not very coordinated.
Indeed their only saving grace is that the buffalo can't communicate
very well either.
Of course if the buffalo herd
surrounded the lions when they were sleeping and just methodically
trampled them to death, their whole problem would be over, but there
is no buffalo general to lead them in such an endeavor.