Are bone-animation-calculations shared between instances?

From another engine I know the feature animation-sharing, which doesn't mean that several models can have one animation file with different animations, but that bone-calculations are shared for several instances so they're only calculated once per frame. So if you'd share a walk-animation, two (or more) models would walk exactly at the same time.

  1. Is this possible within Unity3D?

  2. If yes, is it even automatically enabled?

If you do things "normally", you do not get "instancing" of your animated character. I know our demo team has been experimenting with this a bit lately, I've asked them to step in and describe what their tricks are in this area.