Joint attention is the socio-cognitive ability, of two or more social animals, living in the same socio-familiar group, to share attention towards something, some situation or someone, as in this photo in which Pan and Idea join their shared attention towards something other, and this can be defined as a social disposition.

For some authors that deal with ethical questions, this kind of social behavior is connected with the evolutionary question about morality, because joint attention presumes the capacity to share the perspective of another and this falls in the cognitive innate foundations for moral reasoning.

Of course this can happen only in presence of a familiar context with strong bonds and is not present between animals unfamiliar to each other. So ethics for animals is a social theme, not inherent to socialization classes for animals, because those last ones can not be defined as really social contexts.

In the pic by Mattia Marinolli, Pan and Idea, living with Irene Buttà (Learning Animals student), are joining their attention.