Animal Biopolitics: How Animals Vote Antonino Pennisi 1 • Laura Giallongo 1 Ó Springer Science+Business Media B.V., part of Springer Nature 2018 Abstract The social research about group decision-making in the human societies has received recent contributions from studies reached in the field of ethology and Game theory. Comparative data revealed the adoption of symbolic systems for vote expression and the consensus achievement in other social species. The wide dif- fusion of the voting procedure—as a sign of an ecological rationality– in species with different social organizations and cognitive levels, requires a new interpreta- tion of the consensus issue assuming a new evolutionary biopolitical perspective, for the survey of the sociality and in particular of the effects of linguistic rationality on the human group decision-making . Keywords Consensual decisions Á Group decision-making Á Voting Á Naturalistic ethics Á Biopolitics 1 Introduction Recent empirical and experimental research set in the ethological field and Game theory, extended to social sciences and biopolitics, have shown that the decision- making of social species happens through the adoption of symbolic systems for consensus-construction (vocalizations, ritualized movements, dances). In ethology consensus means that the members of a group about crucial decisions—such as migration, the choice about the foraging sites or a new home—decide on the same & Antonino Pennisi antonio.pennisi@unime.it Laura Giallongo lgiallongo@unime.it 1 Department of Cognitive Sciences, Psychology, Pedagogy and Cultural Studies, University of Messina, Via Concezione, 8, 98121 Messina, Italy 123 Int J Semiot Law https://doi.org/10.1007/s11196-018-9560-2