What is Loneliness

I've been meaning to write this down for a long time. It is short and sweet. I wish I had some scientific backing for this idea but I wonder if the feeling of loneliness is part of our evolutionary legacy. We are basically a obligatorily socially species. We really don't do very well as an individual out in the wild by ourselves. We are heavily dependent on other members of our social organization as well as our cultural legacy and all the things that our species has learned over the millennia. Even my house cat is better equipped to survive in the wild than I am. He has claws and teeth and a lot of instincts which help him find, and kill food suitable for him.

So since our species can't survive without being part of a social organization, maybe loneliness is kind of an evolutionarily programmed psychological prompting that something is wrong that will impact our ability to survive. In the wild, if we are cut off from our social organization we are unlikely to survive. Therefore, natural selection has provided a warning signal to us, that our survival chances have been reduced.

I doubt that a solitary creature such as a tiger feels loneliness. We on the other hand, can feel exceedingly upset and depressed to the point of wanting to commit suicide even when we have enough food and other resources needed for our survival, when we are cut off from a social network.