Questions tagged [ethology]
The study of animal behaviour.
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Are grasshoppers monogamous?
Noticed two grasshoppers jumping together on the porch, and started wondering if they are monogamous? I am aware they have males and females.
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Crow branch pecking behaviour
I was walking through a small park when two crows started cawing at me, and followed me, flying from tree-to-tree as I walked. I speculate that this is a territorial or protective behaviour, but what ...
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Are we more attracted to people of the same ethnicity? [closed]
Are humans more attracted to people from their own ethnic groups? I ask this because most of the time people have relationships with people of their own ethnicity, and I wonder if it's purely social, ...
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Does level of bats activity differs from day to day?
Say we measure bats activity as number of passes through given area. Can it differ significantly depending from day to day or it stays on average roughly the same? I am wondering whether the following ...
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Why do these earthworms stay between the road lines?
This article shows pictures of earthworms during floods in Texas. The worms ball up, supposedly in order to survive the floods.
Photo Credit: Texas Parks And Wildlife Department
Can anyone explain ...
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Do any birds have established "poke a predator's eyes out" behavior?
Is there a pattern/tactics of behavior in any birds species that consists of attacking a predator's eyes with its beak?
I'm looking for established tactics, not 1 or 2 anecdotal examples.
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Is homosexuality an adaptation in humans?
Homo sapiens have menopause - as some other mammals (e.g. some Cetacea) - a phenomenon where older females live for decades after the end of their own reproduction.
Perhaps homosexuality, that looks ...
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Advantages of gregarious vs solitary behaviour?
I'm trying to explain why birds (specifically wildfowl) are gregarious during the winter and solitary during the summer.
I think that in winter, birds are gregarious to reduce the risk of predation ...
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Do ant colonies prioritize survival of particular members above others?
In some (perhaps small) human communities people may starve because they have no income. This could be interpreted as a consequence of them not participating in the community, hence they don't get any ...
user15342
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What triggers the migration of robins?
I live in central Massachusetts, and have begun seeing robins, as we generally do in early March. The temperature is well below normal, though, and three feet of snow are covering the still-frozen ...
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Can canines communicate with each other using gaze direction?
After researching why humans have white scleras when most primates have dark scleras, I stumbled upon the cooperative eye hypothesis. It proposed that white scleras may have evolved on behalf that it ...
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Do species other than humans have distinct daily feeding patterns?
I have a general interest in complex adaptive systems and I have found that nature and the organisms within it is a perfect natural case of a rich adaptive system with a lot of possibilities for ...
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Are domesticated animals really "more intelligent," or is that a myth/misunderstanding?
Often do I hear people speaking of how the domestic house cats are more friendly, less ferocious, less savage-like, and smarter and/or than their distinct but equivalent feline-species friends, like ...
user11653
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Can dolphins actually communicate linguistically?
Humans use "language." By language, I mean the thing I am using right now to talk to you.
I know dolphins and orcas have very complex communication systems and also seem to process linguistic and ...
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Why do some animals try to imitate other animals?
There is a tendency of some animals (including people!) to be "copy-cats" and try to imitate members of their own, and sometimes other, species.
The most obvious example is a parrot copying human ...
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Why not use non-visual self-recognition to test for consciousness in an organism?
Background
A well-known test for consciousness in an organism is to observe its ability to recognise itself in a mirror (see wikipedia article: "Mirror test").
Question
Why haven't I come across a ...
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Why do people and animals stretch out their bodies and what is causing this behaviour?
I noticed that my cat which is only 6 months old has started stretching its body from time to time. Then I thought that this motion doesn't seem very natural from another cat's viewpoint, so my cat ...
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Do wolves bury food like dogs?
Many breeds of domestic dogs seem to like burying food, presumably in preparation for leaner times.
Assuming that dogs evolved from animals similar to the modern wolves through a mix of natural and ...
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For how long can a raven stay airborne (a week or more)?
I'm wondering for how long a raven can stay continuously airborne, if strained to do so? If it makes a difference, I'm mostly interested in the Common raven, Corvus corax. Are there for instance any ...
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Where do migratory birds go when it rains?
I was reading a comic from XKCD which inspired me to ask this question: "well, where do they go when it rains?" I know that when it rains you usually don't see any birds flying through the sky.
I ...
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Book-recommendation: Ethology
I am looking for a book that covers the following topics in ethology:
Behaviour
Sensory filtering, reponsive-ness, sign stimuli, learning and memory, instinct, habituation, conditioning, imprinting. ...
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Which factors may affect a choice of an oviposition place in nocturnal moths?
Winter Moth (Operophtera brumata) is a small brachypterous (females have stunned wings - unable to fly) moth which places eggs on thick branches.
I would like to know which abiotic and biotic factors ...
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What is this woodlouse doing?
I picked an apple from the ground, it was wet with dew and a woodlouse was stuck to it, with its back against the apple. When it got loose, it started flexing its "tail" like this for a while. Why?
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What does this Barbary Macaque facial expression mean?
A girl pretended having a piece of food in her hand and pointed it to a Barbary Macaque in Gibraltar. As a response he made this facial expression to her. What does this mean?
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Why do pigeons kill their chicks when touched by a human?
I used to have many pigeons around the house. If by chance one of the chicks fell out of the nest, we used to put it back using gloves.
Usually, if we would touch the chicks with our bare hands, ...
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Facultative Cannibalism?
I heard about Larger cats eating the cubs. Is it some kind of facultative cannibalism or they can eat there own kind like that?
What are the facultative cannibalism present in animal kingdom?
What ...
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Why does a housecat (or other predator) play with it's food before killing and eating it? Does it make the food taste better?
I've read a couple people theorize that a cat playing with a mouse causes the mouse's body to be flushed with adrenaline before the final kill and that this adrenaline makes the meat more tender/...
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How do ants know where they are going without eyes? [closed]
I know that ants have some sense of direction, but what is the physiology behind this sense?
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Can foxes move their ears independently?
I've read that dogs can do move their ears independently, i.e., point one ear in the direction of a sound without having to point the other one at the same time. Is this a common trait with other ...
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Why does ant queen keep the eggs out of her hive?
I have captured an ant queen and now I'm trying to create an artificial ant nest.
I have noticed that though she has dug a hole to hide in, she keeps the eggs out of it unless she feels that they ...
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To what extent do domestic animals understand language?
Note: Please tell me to re-post this in Cogsci or pets if this doesn't belong here.
Hello All,
I want to know how dogs or other domesticated animals differentiate between normal chat and a command. ...
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Book recommendation on mammal (or just primate) behaviour, especially in relation to child-rearing
I have a growing frustration with the lows 'new-age' parenting is reaching, along with asininity of so much of our public schools' (and summer camps') philosophies and policies in relation to our kids....
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Why does Hunger lead to the aggressive behavior?
I have observed that frequently when people are hungry; they tend to get angry more easily on pointless issues. Does this mean that our fight or flight response is more active when a person is hungry? ...
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Which of the following demonstrates the pattern of development in Greylag Geese?
Which of the following demonstrates the pattern of development in Greylag Geese? {Please give specific answers, which among the following gives the best available demonstration?, If needed, have a ...
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Why do flies fly in circles?
Lying on my bed, doing nothing I recently noticed flies usually fly in small circles, right under my ceiling lamp. Worth noting - the lamp was off as it was middle of a day. And those flies kept ...
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Does any animal species have two sexes and more genders?
Are there any animal species that have two sexes and a kind of different internal diversification in two genders or more? I don't mean something like different-task-based diversity, but something ...
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Why don't birds in flocks fly into each other?
I've seen videos of hundreds of birds flying in the same general direction but creating incredible patterns in the sky seemingly instantaneously! How do they all know in what direction to turn at the ...
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Do animals follow tactics?
Are animals able to plan hunts, give tasks if they do it in groups and fulfil it adapted to the current situation? Do they use unique tactics for special circumstances (e.g. based on experiences) or ...
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Circadian rhythm in birds
Animals can use their circadian clocks to determine direction from the
position of the sun. In a particular experiment conducted in Iceland,
a bird, kept in a cage open to the sky, was trained to ...
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Dogs bark at familiar person in Santa costume. Why? Don't dogs trust smell over vision?
Last night 10 humans and 2 dogs spent Christmas together. At some point, one human dissappears for a few minutes and comes back wearing a full Santa outfit. Upon respawning, the dogs start barking ...
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How much influence does toxoplasmosis have on personality and intelligence?
Latent toxoplasmosis affects up to 1/3 of the human population and up to 40% of the population in Australia. I have heard that latent toxoplasmosis has many significant undesirable effects on ...
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Why do most animals never seem to evolve over millenia?
People often say, including those with extensive knowledge in biology, that a certain species of animal will evolve in one way or another:
From changing environments.
Mutations.
Possibly even genetic ...
user5165
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Why do animals only eat some parts of their food?
For example monkeys/apes only eat part of a fruit and then throw the rest. Cats (big and small species) only eat some parts of their prey and then they abandon it.
Humans on the contrary leave as few ...
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Do animals suffer from "Human" mental disorders?
It is tragic, but apparently Killer whales and Dolphins can commit suicide too (e.g. here)...
This suggests they can become depressed. I wondered whether they were "clinically" depressed like many ...
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What are the universal laws of Nature concerning animals' behaviour? [closed]
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 ...
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Do ants within a colony ever fight or come to conflict?
I'm investigating how hierarchical groups of a larger organization with a common goal tend to come to conflict with one another over time. As you decompose a large group (for example a corporation), ...
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Do bigger animals have more testosterone?
I was wondering the other day outside, thinking about varieties of species and their aggression levels, etc.
I had a theory that since these highly aggressive, powerful, and viciously advantageous ...
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Is it true that there is a spider that eats parasites from caterpillars
I think I once saw a video of a caterpillar that could get infected by a parasite, and could die of that, unless a specific kind of spider would eat the parasite, and so once the caterpillar is ...
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Competition for mates in sea horses
This source here
...research has shown that it is STILL the males that compete for
females.
says that male sea horses compete for mates but this source here
Females exhibit a competitive ...
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Will a garter snake eat unusual prey if made to smell like something normal?
I have noticed that my garter snake only eats after it has smelled it's prey to make sure it is a slug, and it doesn't matter whether it's moving or not. If I were to coat, say, a caterpillar with ...
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