Intro to animal behaviour
Eight-minute read
Okay quiet please, settle down. I’m Professor Grisdale and this lecture will be on the subject of animal behaviour. But first we must ask ourselves, what is animal behaviour?
There’s no exact universal definition, but generally speaking it’s considered to be -
Everything animals do, including movement and other activities and underlying mental processes.
That’s a lot to cover in just one lesson so we’d better get started. Obviously people have been living among animals for a long time now. The whole time we’ve existed as a species, in fact. Most of the life we see around us on Earth beat us here by a healthy margin. Since then plenty of species have been domesticated over the years and human-animal relationships are nothing new.
But the scientific study of animals didn’t really kick into gear until the 1600s, and it’s kept up momentum ever since. European naturalists like Charles Darwin, John Ray and Alfred Wallace studied animals extensively and wrote groundbreaking works that changed our understanding of how we understand other species.
Since animal behaviour is so broad a topic, and open to interpretation to an extent, scholars disagree about a lot. But one near-universally agreed fact is that an animal’s goal in life is to maximise its lifetime reproductive success. You’re going to hear that term a lot if you keep studying animal behaviour.
Lifetime reproductive success is basically how many viable offspring an animal has. They are hard-wired by evolution to make sure their genes are passed on to the next generation. The more babies they have, the more of their DNA gets inherited and is represented in the coming generation.
Animals need to be fit, strong and healthy at all times so that they can live as long as possible to have as many babies as they can. A slow rabbit that can’t keep up with a mate won’t be able to breed. Their genes are holding them back, and only the faster animals pass their traits down to the future population.
A frog with a super-loud and alluring mating call can attract more mates than a neighbour that has a frog in their throat. The sexy Barry White frog spawns hundreds of babies and they inherit his bass-y genes.
Behaviours that help an animal survive are called adaptive. A bird’s immediate response to an alarm call from within the flock gives it the best chance to escape.
Then there are maladaptive behaviours. This usually happens because of an extreme environmental change. The kakapo parrot used to live alongside a predatory eagle that would hunt their chicks. Those that nested on the ground survived the aerial attacks and changed the way the species operates.
But these days that eagle is long-extinct and domestic cats have been introduced to New Zealand, the native country of the flightless, docile, ground-nesting kakapo. Through no fault of their own, their behaviour is now working against them.
Over millions of years, the animals around us have been adapting to an ever-changing environment and the genes that have made survival more likely have survived too. If every single animal is gunning for maximum lifetime reproductive success, the cream of the crop will have a bunch of healthy babies and the whole species gets stronger.
Strict animal behaviour researchers would say that animals are only motivated by the chance to go forth and multiply, but these days a lot of experts believe there’s at least a little bit of leeway. We’ve come a long way since the forefathers of animal behaviour were making notes on their voyages. We now know there are some extremely intelligent animals out there, and sometimes they do things that don’t have an abvious function.
When it comes to determining how intelligent an animal is, there are certain Indicators we look for. Tool use, problem solving, mathematical ability, self-awareness, memory and the ability to use deception are all signs of higher cognition in a non-human animal.
My favourite one in there is deception. Learning that animals can lie was revolutionary to me. I always thought that was something unique to humans. Turns out, that couldn’t be further from the truth.
Birds in flocks have been documented to make false alarm calls that indicate a predator is near. The bird that ‘cried wolf’ stays put and wolfs down as much food as it can before the others come back.
Scientists have seen young chacma baboons watching another monkey foraging, call out to their mother as if hurt. She runs over and assumes the foraging monkey has hurt her baby, so chases them away and returns to her activity. That leaves the food source open to the baby baboon.
There’s another fantastic example from a 2001 paper about animal deception.
At a zoological park in which we conduct some of our research, the lowest ranking member of a group of spotted hyenas (Crocuta crocuta) arrived at one of the outdoor areas before any of the other hyenas. For enrichment purposes, the keepers had placed a cow head in this area.
The early arriving hyena picked up the cow head and ran into a pool of water. He then dropped the cow head into the water, submerging and sitting on it just before the other hyenas arrived. The arriving hyenas immediately began searching for the treat that they could sense had been there. During this search, the low-ranking male remained seated in the pool (still on top of the cow head until the dominant female entered the pool and submerged her head while looking at him.
When the female resurfaced, she seized the male by the scruff of the neck, tossed him aside, and collected the cow head. As the meal was consumed, the female prevented the male from obtaining even the smallest amount. The male certainly appeared to have tried to deceive the other hyenas, and suffered the consequences for his unsuccessful attempt.
Even though it’s amazing, it does make logical sense for animals to behave this way. Misleading others makes more resources available for the liar, and an animal has to be able to feed itself well in order stay in good enough condition to maximise its lifetime reproductive success. You get the picture.
But there are a whole host of animals that show altruism. They help each other out, sometimes with no discernible reward whatsoever. There are insects, like ants and termites, that lay down their lives to protect the rest of the colony. Heroic, yes. But protecting the queen is the way these animals pump up their lifetime reproductive success.
Vampire bats have a disgusting but adorable habit of feeding their friends their own vomit. Members of the subfamily Desmodontinae have to feed every 72 hours or risk starvation. Well-fed bats regurgitate some of their own meal to make sure a hungry neighbour will make it through the day.
In 2013 a pod of sperm whales ‘adopted’ a bottlenose dolphin with a deformed spine in the first ever case of sperm whales forming social bonds with another species. In 2008 a pair of beached pygmy sperm whales were led to the safety of deep water by a bottlenose dolphin the New Zealand locals know as Moko. A conservation officer called to the scene to help stated -
The dolphin managed in a couple of minutes what we had failed to do in an hour and a half.
But my favourite example of animal altruism is a relatively recent discovery. Humpback whales have started sabotaging orca hunts. In Monterey Bay in May of 2012, a pod of orcas attacked and killed a grey whale calf. But before they could eat their meal, 16 humpback whales arrived at the scene.
They fought with the killer whales for six and a half straight hours to prevent them from eating the calf. They even ignored the vast krill blooms that erupted nearby to keep up their offence. They turned down an opportunity to feed to prevent the calf being eaten.
Whales mourn their dead, especially young calves. Mothers can spend weeks if not months carrying their lost babies with them before being ready to say goodbye. The humpback’s behaviour appears to be an act of kindness towards a heartbroken mother. Either that, or it’s revenge against the orcas that just happens to benefit the grieving grey whale.
Orcas routinely hunt calves or larger whales. Mothers often travel alone with their babies, migrating to cold water where there’s enough food to make in through the season. There have been 115 interactions documented between orcas and humpback whales and it’s starting to look like the humpbacks are beginning to hold a grudge.
This sabotage behaviour doesn’t appear to be helping the big whales maximise their lifetime reproductive success. They’re helping out another species, which a down-the-line behaviourist would identify as competition for resources. You’re not supposed to help the competition.
Animal behaviour is more complicated than you could possibly imagine. Perhaps the pinnacle of the animal behaviour kingdom is the dolphin family. It’s a widely-accepted fact that dolphins are the best animals on Earth. Write that down. Hopefully you’ve been taking notes this whole time.
I would love to start a lengthy monologue about dolphins but I’m afraid we’re out of time for today. But there is a charming little podcast series called A Dolphin Pod I could recommend for some homework listening. Once you’ve heard the whole thing, you’ll be able to complete the simple quiz questions below.
Please have them ready before next week’s lecture. Have a good week everyone, and just a reminder - if one more of you walks in here five minutes late with a takeaway coffee I’m going to slap it out of your hands so fast you’ll think you’ve been attacked by a binturong.
Class dismissed.
Intro to animal behaviour quiz:
Dolphins spent __ million years evolving into free-ranging predators who choose both how they spend their time and who they want with them.
Bottlenose ________ are capable of recognising themselves in a mirror, indicating they are self-aware and likely have an individial identity.
Wild dolphins swim in water that is an average of one mile deep, while the vast majority of captive dolphins are kept in tanks less than __ metres deep.
Killer whales don’t show aggression to humans in the wild, but once in tanks can become extremely aggressive. Tilikum the wild-captured killer whale killed __ people during his 34 years in captivity.
Orca brains have cells called _______ neurons in their brains which scientists believe allow them to feel emotion. They have three times as many as humans do, even when adjusting for the orca’s larger brain size. That could mean they feel emotions three times more intensely than humans.
At least __ dolphins have been suspected of suicide due to the cruelty of cetacean captivity.
Countries like ______ and _____ still capture wild dolphins and force them to become performers, all the while facing physical abuse. _____ takes it one step further, and kills the dolphins it doesn’t trade into the captive industry.
__ dolphins are suffering in captivity at this very moment, and it’s high time we changed that.
