Mark Moffett is a writing fellow for the Human Bridges project of the Independent Media Institute and research associate in the Department of Entomology at the National Museum of Natural History in the Smithsonian Institution.
More about this author
As a biologist at the Smithsonian, Mark Moffett has been building a synthesis on how societies stay together and fall apart with three years of funding from the John Templeton Foundation, culminating in a work group he put together of leading sociologists, political scientists, anthropologists, archaeologists and primatologists hosted by the Department of Psychology at Yale, which aimed to synthesize what we know about how societies stay intact over time. His most recent book, The Human Swarm: How our societies arise, thrive and fall (Basic Books, 2019) has been called “a magisterial work of monumental importance” by Scientific American columnist Michael Shermer, while Kevin Kelly, founder of Wired magazine, tells us to “read this manifesto if you like to have your mind changed.” In the fall of 2025 the Entomological Society of America pronounced his a “Legend in Entomology” for his research on ants.
One of only a handful of people to earn a Ph.D. under the world’s most respected ecologist, E.O. Wilson, Moffett is a modern-day explorer-naturalist who has earned a medal from the Explorers Club and has been given the monikers “the Indiana Jones of Entomology” by National Geographic and “the Jane Goodall of ants” by Jane herself. Moffett was a visiting scholar at Harvard, and he has published numerous scholarly articles and 29 stories featuring several hundred of his images for National Geographic magazine. The Smithsonian Institution and the National Geographic Museum in Washington, D.C. have produced major exhibitions devoted to his efforts; and an exhibit of his work on the Ba’Aka hunter-gatherers in the Congo was featured at the 2025 Venice Biennale.
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Societies, Identity, and Belonging
Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society | June | 2020
Summary of a talk given for the American Philosophical Society that reviewed some of the basic ideas from his most recent book, The Human Swarm: How our societies arise, thrive and fall (Basic Books, 2019).
Nautilus | October | 2019
An expert on animal societies on what sets human societies apart.
Publications by this author
Animal Behaviour | January | 2026
This special issue will be on societies. Of course, "society" has multiple meanings, with the word perhaps most often used in ethology to describe social interactions involving several individuals. For the purposes of this issue, however, the term will apply to a special kind of group, one with the potential to last across generations and for which the constituent individuals recognize one another as members. Framed in this way, membership in a society is a matter of what social psychologists describe as social identity, being based on a strict and in this case enduring sense of belonging together.
How widespread are such groups? I will reach out for contributions from biologists who work on promising taxa that have been investigated over the long term in the field, to ask whether their study species can be described as living in societies, as characterized here; or instead deviate in some manner from this perspective, and if so, how. If the proposed concept of society applies to a species, how do those groups stay intact while remaining separate from other such groups over time; and what can cause a society to fail/break apart and new groups to arise? Also, how is membership determined? Must all the members know each other as individuals, or can they recognize one another based on signals of group identity, such as a vocalization or scent? Also to be addressed is whether societies control a group territory; when and how individual can transfer memberships between societies; and the patterns of kinship and cooperation within and between societies.
Behavioral and Brain Sciences | February | 2024
I propose the need to establish a comparative study of societies, conceived of specificially here as bounded groups beyond a simple, immediate family that have the potential to endure for generations, whose constituent individuals recognize one another as members, and that maintain control over a physical space. This definition, with refinements and ramifications I explore, serves for cross-disciplinary research because it applies not just to nations but to diverse hunter–gatherer and tribal groups with a pedigree that likely traces back to the societies of our common ancestor with the chimpanzees. It also applies to groups among other species for which comparison to humans can be instructive. Notably, it describes societies in terms of shared group identification rather than social interactions. An expansive treatment of the topic is overdue given that the concept of a society (even the use of such synonyms as primate “troop”) has fallen out of favor among biologists, resulting in a semantic mess; whereas sociologists rarely consider societies beyond nations, and social psychologists predominantly focus on ethnicities and other component groups of societies. I examine the relevance of societies across realms of inquiry, discussing the ways member recognition is achieved; how societies compare to other organizational tiers; and their permeability, territoriality (allowing for mobile territories), relation to social networks and kinship, and impermanence. We have diverged from our ancestors in generating numerous affiliations within and between societies while straining the expectation of society memberships by assimilating diverse populations. Nevertheless, if, as I propose, societies were the first, and thereafter the primary, ingroups of prehistory, how we came to register society boundaries may be foundational to all human “groupiness.” A discipline-spanning approach to societies should further our understanding of what keeps societies together and what tears them apart.
How Human Exceptionalism is Pushing Planetary Boundaries
Co-authors: Brian Swartz and Brent D. Mishler | Springer | December | 2022
Chapter 6: Symbols and How We Came to Be Human
Abstract: A longstanding belief commonly mentioned in support of human exceptionalism is that our species is distinct from others in using symbols (a word I use here, as it is in the social sciences, to describe anything with a socially shared meaning that isn’t obvious). Countering the assumption that symbols are a distinct category that's unique to humans, I propose that they be properly recognized as operating in concert with an impressive number and diversity of less widely meaningful, or outright meaningless, social markers. This chapter critiques the views on symbolism in our species often expressed by sociologists, psychologists, anthropologists, archaeologists, and biologists. I consider how symbolism could have evolved from behaviors of non-human animals, some of which live in societies bound together by more superficial “markers” of identity that do not convey any more profound significance. Such markers, considered broadly, can be essential in holding societies together.
Co-authors: Simon Garnier, Kathleen M. Eisenhardt, Nathan R. Furr, Massimo Warglien, Costanza Sartoris, William Ocasio, Thorbjørn Knudsen, Lars A. Bach and Joachim Offenberg | Journal of Organization Design | February | 2021
Thus far the articles in the series JOD calls the “Organization Zoo” have employed the notion of a “zoo” metaphorically to describe an array of human institutions. Here we take the term literally to consider the design of the most complex organi- zations in the living world beside those of humans, a favorite of insect zoos around the world: ant colonies. We consider individuality and group identity in the functioning of ant organizations; advantages of a flat organization without hierarchies or leaders; self-organization; direct and indirect communication; job specialization; labor coordination; and the role of errors in innovation. The likely value and limitations of comparing ant and human organizations are briefly examined.
How Our Societies Arise, Thrive, and Fall
Basic Books | April | 2019
If a chimpanzee ventures into the territory of a different group, it will almost certainly be killed. But a New Yorker can fly to Los Angeles--or Borneo--with very little fear. Psychologists have done little to explain this: for years, they have held that our biology puts a hard upper limit--about 150 people--on the size of our social groups. But human societies are in fact vastly larger. How do we manage--by and large--to get along with each other?
In this paradigm-shattering book, biologist Mark W. Moffett draws on findings in psychology, sociology and anthropology to explain the social adaptations that bind societies. He explores how the tension between identity and anonymity defines how societies develop, function, and fail. Surpassing Guns, Germs, and Steel and Sapiens, The Human Swarm reveals how mankind created sprawling civilizations of unrivaled complexity--and what it will take to sustain them.
Challenges of Global Canopy Ecology and Conservation
Co-authors: Margaret Lowman, Soubadra Devy and T. Ganesh | Springer | June | 2013
Chapter 3: Comparative Canopy Biology and the Structure of Ecosystems
Abstract: The way ecologists think about canopy biology as a scientific discipline could lead them to overlook different communities of spatially fixed organisms that may have properties usefully compared to or contrasted with forest canopies. This chapter represents a series of discussions and reviews on the possible nature and limits of canopy biology and introduces the prospect of a general comparative science of biological canopies.
Biotropica | August | 2000
The lack of recent critiques about terminology has led to the frequent misuse or confusingly varied use of the words that are more or less specific to the field of terrestrial canopy biology. I provide definitions for ca 170 terms and subterms, with translations into four languages. Rather than limit coverage to tree crowns, I define canopy biology as the study of life within any aboveground parts of all plant communities, temperate and tropical. This broadened perspective enables ecologists to consider the entire range of challenges faced by organisms living in aboveground plant life, from just above the rhizosphere to the outer limits of plant growth into the atmosphere. Further, this redefinition may reduce the potential for anthropocentric biases in interpreting life on trees or other plants; encourage the use of alternative ecosystems for hypotheses that may be difficult to address in treetops; and promote more general conceptual thinking about life on vegetation, most notably the importance of scaling in ecology. Among the salient points in terminology: the concept of “stratification” has been criticized in part because strata have been defined many ways, but a flexible application of the word is central to its utility; the source of nutrients is pivotal in distinguishing epiphytes from parasites, rather than the more general issue of an organism’s effects on its host; “hemiepiphyte,” as currently used, confounds two radically different life cycle strategies, suggesting a new term, “nomadic vine,” to describe the strategy typical of many aroids; there is a confusion in the literature caused by varied applications of the word “climb;” locomotor terms may have to be modified as more becomes known about forces underlying limb kinematics; and studies of leaping and falling organisms tend to overemphasize arbitrary distinctions between gliding and para- chuting to the detriment of the more critical issue of capacity for “controlled descent.”
Media by this author
Interview | December | 2025
Interview by Marlin E. Rice for American Entomologist
Interview | February | 2025
Interview by Kevin McCaffree for Theory and Society
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