Facebook had emerged as the best, most accessible, and most efficient way to maintain bonds with others.
The bonobo chimpanzees of Congo, for instance, eschew monogamy because they use sex as a social activity to develop and maintain bonds with male and female chimps.
Cows live in "schools," but they are not permanently associated with other cows, though sometimes they maintain bonds with offspring for some years.
The evolutionary anthropologist Robin Dunbar has put forward the idea that language has evolved partly as a form of social "grooming", which functions in a similar way to the physical grooming practised by other primates to maintain bonds.
"You work 12 hours a day Mon-Friday PLUS every other weekend, with no lieu days!" A former sales negotiator added: "It becomes exceptionally difficult to maintain bonds and relationships with people outside [Foxtons] EVEN IF YOU LIVE WITH THEM".
Social laughter, Dr. Dunbar suggests, relaxed and contagious, is "grooming at a distance," an activity that fosters closeness in a group the way one-on-one grooming, patting and delousing promote and maintain bonds between individual primates of all sorts.
Judge Judith Kaye, in a dissent that has since been celebrated, noted that millions of American children had been born into families with a gay or lesbian parent; the court's decision would restrict the ability of these children to "maintain bonds that may be crucial to their development".
Because games are so much fun, so sticky, they can build and maintain bonds with former classmates or co-workers, without having to do something cringey, like attend a class reunion.
Indeed, dolphins don't copy just anybody's signature whistle; they are very selective in how they use this talent, using it solely to maintain bonds between mother and calf and between allied males, King says.
Many very smart sociologists and anthropologists have discussed the ways in which ritual sacrifice helps bring communities together and maintain bonds.
