-1
$\begingroup$

I'm looking for very old (centuries) treaty or recent (20 & 21th century) research that state what some of the laws of Nature are, particularly concerning wild animals' behaviour. Such as; every animal does this, no animal does that, etc.

Laws that could be then used to simulate or reproduce natural behaviours or check against unnatural ones.

Added: I'm looking for more simple laws, such as "no (wild) animal eats cooked food". Assuming it's true then humans broke that law of Nature. It's the relation to Nature that interests me. I used the word behaviour in the large sense, as in, what are the laws that animals seem to follow (dos and don'ts) in the world. I suppose that by looking at what the human is the only one to do we can find lots of those laws.

Improve this question
$\endgroup$
3
  • $\begingroup$ the reference to the particular work you are referring to is more like a research project seems to me. Different times have different opinions on this and without even a century or millenium to tie it to, it does seem impossible. Origin of Species is not a bad example of such a work. $\endgroup$
    – shigeta
    Nov 26, 2013 at 16:31
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ This question is just far too broad and rather vague in many aspects to be answerable here in this format. $\endgroup$
    – Mad Scientist
    Nov 26, 2013 at 16:32
  • $\begingroup$ It's really simple, but if nobody has gathered such knowledge before then of course it's going to be difficult to answer. $\endgroup$
    – WaterBearer
    Nov 26, 2013 at 16:50

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
2
$\begingroup$

This seems to be rather impossible to answer! Very fundamental laws of nature are rather found in physics, mathematics or philosophy than in biology.

The theory of evolution is generally considered as a field that brings light to the whole science of biology. T. Dobzhanski famously said: "Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution" So I guess you might be interested to "laws" coming from that field.

I'm afraid you will some more knowledge in animal behavior than what you can acquire from this simple question before starting simulating. You can easily spend 5 years studying animal behavior and still having much things to learn from that field.

I would guess you might be interested in the concept of selfishness and altruism. I don't know your level of knowledge in biology. The following might seem a bit complicated (although it is a very brief and inaccurate summary of the real science that study these fields), if so, I would invite you learn about basic stuff in biology and evolutionary biology.

Selfishness and altruism

In order to have natural selection, you need:

  • variation
  • heritability (of the trait that present some variation)
  • different reproductive success (or success of copying itself) according to the trait which is heritable.

Following, this idea, an allele that behave altruistically (providing benefit (in terms of ability to copy itself) to someone else to its cost (always in the same terms)) will disappear to the benefit of the selfish allele and therefore altruistic behavior should never be found in nature.

However, we find altruistic behavior (and that was one of the greatest flaw Darwin could think about his theory):

  • Because of relatedness (Hamilton's law)
    • An animal would always behave in order to increase its inclusive fitness (=direct fitness + indirect fitness)
  • Because of genetically correlated behavior
  • Because of upper level selection
  • Because behaving in a way will directly or indirectly influence the way others will behave with you

Now, that's a very big field. I can't develop everything in this answer! If you liked the discussion of selfishness and altruism, you might be interested to read the selfish gene or the extended phenotype.

If you want to go a bit deeper into mathematical formulation you might be interested in evolutionary game theory and hamilton's rule.

Here is a quick formulation of Hamilton's rule on this website

UPDATE (in reaction to your comment)

So, you're not looking for a scientific law/theory/evidence/etc... you're looking for a simple observation in the nature that fit all animals. Here are some examples:

  • There is no wheeled animals (see this).
  • There is no animal that migrate every year from Earth to Mars
  • All animals need a source of organic carbon
  • All animals possess some flagellates cells (I think)
  • All animals reproduce (not necessarily sexually)

If you want to talk only about behavior, then you might have some trouble to generalize things to all animals because, there are many non-motile animals, many animals that have no brain, many animals that does not even have organs, … As a side note: It is possible that if you accept that a sponge (which is at the base of the Animalia kingdom see this website if you want to learn about what is classified to be an animal) produce some kind of behavior, you will have to accept that an oak tree also have behavior

UPDATE. Ah you meant animal in opposition to human?! Humans are included in my above list. If you look for differences then between human and all other animals, than you won't many other things than the brain and the behavior indeed. I hope nobody lost a whole life of work listing what human can do and what animals can't!

  • Human have a complete and articulate language (I don't fully remember what adjective we use to differentiate human to animal language)
  • Human are conscious that the are conscious that they are! It is quite hard to show that animals are not!
  • Humans are the only animals that drive a car!
  • etc…

You're using the word law in a weird way. You might to have a look to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_law and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_law

Improve this answer
$\endgroup$
9
  • $\begingroup$ That's a bit too theoretic. I'm looking for more simple laws, such as "no (wild) animal eats cooked food". Assuming it's true then humans broke that law of Nature. It's the relation to Nature that interests me. I used the word behaviour in the large sense, as in, what are the laws that animals seem to follow in the world. $\endgroup$
    – WaterBearer
    Nov 26, 2013 at 16:17
  • $\begingroup$ @user2534 see the update in my answer. $\endgroup$
    – Remi.b
    Nov 26, 2013 at 16:28
  • $\begingroup$ Very funny. Well I guess that by looking at what the human is the only one to do we can find lots of laws. I hoped that someone had already listed them, though. $\endgroup$
    – WaterBearer
    Nov 26, 2013 at 16:36
  • $\begingroup$ @user2534 see my updated answer. $\endgroup$
    – Remi.b
    Nov 26, 2013 at 17:40
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ I am afraid you can hardly explain the difference between some silly examples (the example with wheeled animals is actually very interesting and not silly at all!) and yours because there are no difference! Many humans have copulated with there close parents (look at a genealogy of european royalty). I think there are/were some tribute tat practice canibalism and there are many cases of human killing their own baby. I am even wondering if we couldn't find some animals that let their food some time under a big sun in order to cook it. $\endgroup$
    – Remi.b
    Nov 26, 2013 at 19:05

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .