wombat_socho

Actually I've always like the Dunbar Number. I that "exceptions" fall into two basic categories. Those who are a deviation or two off the mean in their DB, and those people (like the traveller you mention) who have fluid membranes for including and excluding people from thier monkeysphere. In the latter case the more interesting question is how many people in those traveller's monkeyspheres reciprocally hold the traveller as a social intimate?

Similar to this is the discussion around family-of-choice for LGBT individuals rather than family-of-origin. Research (I'm blanking on who) came up with needing 8-12 individuals to generate the needed social support, and that it takes ~1 year of effort to build that size family-of-choice.