People don't really think of it in this sense but many animals are social in nature and it is really not proper to keep them individually.
Dogs are an excellent example dogs are wolves. Wolves are pack animals an ideal pack in the wild consists of 5 to 7 animals in better conditions packs contain even more members than that. that is certainly not feasable for most people in an urban setting but in a rural setting it certainly is and provided they are cared for properly they would certainly benefit from the arrangement. I found out a long time ago that dogs do much better if you keep more than one (for the record I currently have 2.). The ordinances out there that limit the number of dogs to one or two certainly do not take this into consideration and are drafted by animal rights activists who in my opinion based on having worked with such individuals have very little working knowledge of about the actual biology of animals.
The finches you mentioned are another good example. Many birds live in flocks or in the minimum live in pairs and most of the behavioral problems with birds are the result of keeping them as individuals. It would be much wiser to think a small group of birds as one entity than to think in terms of having a dozen finches.
Personally when I bred basilisks I kept them in harem type situations of 3 to 5 individuals as they seemed to do better this way (they certainly bred better that way.). I never thought of them in terms of individual basilisks but always thought of them in terms of a colony.

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