Sarah Drinkwater

Dunbar actually doesn’t say that we devote “grooming time” to the whole social group of 150. Rather he says that the 150 is made up from welding together much smaller “primary networks”: coalitions, friendship groups. Intensive grooming (language, for humans) is reserved for close friends. Our intimate group is very small, averaging just five.

Because we don’t ship our shit back to where the food comes from, we keep perpetuating the redistribution of nutrients on the planet. Soils grow barren, so we use synthetic fertiliser, which isn’t anywhere near as good as the real shit, and also is very polluting to produce. Scientists call this phenomenon the metabolic rift.