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sydneyst
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Posted: Sun Apr 25th, 2010 08:20 pm |
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Elephant Moms Help Daughters on First Dates
http://www.elephanttrust.org/node/665
Thu, 2010-04-22 06:10 by hcroze · Forum/category:
A new paper led by one of our research collaborators, Lucy Bates from St. Andrews University, has shown it is quite likely that experienced females demonstrate to their naive young daughters in their first oestrus how to attract the attention of appropriate bulls.
It's another example of the amazing depth and subtlety of elephant behaviour that we can only come to understand through our long-term research.
The paper – Bates LA, Handford R, Lee PC, Njiraini N, Poole JH, Sayialel K, Sayialel S, Moss C and Byrne RW. (2010) Why Do African Elephants (Loxodonta africana) Simulate Oestrus? An Analysis of Longitudinal Data. PLoS ONE 5(4): e10052. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0010052 – can be found here.
Abstract
Female African elephants signal oestrus via chemicals in their urine, but they also exhibit characteristic changes to their posture, gait and behaviour when sexually receptive. Free-ranging females visually signal receptivity by holding their heads and tails high, walking with an exaggerated gait, and displaying increased tactile behaviour towards males.
Parous females occasionally exhibit these visual signals at times when they are thought not to be cycling and without attracting interest from musth males. Using demographic and behavioural records spanning a continuous 28-year period, we investigated the occurrence of this ‘‘simulated’’ oestrus behaviour.
We show that parous females in the Amboseli elephant population do simulate receptive oestrus behaviours, and this false oestrus occurs disproportionately in the presence of naïve female kin who are observed coming into oestrus for the first time. We compare several alternative hypotheses for the occurrence of this simulation:
- false oestrus has no functional purpose (e.g., it merely results from abnormal hormonal changes);
- false oestrus increases the reproductive success of the simulating female, by inducing sexual receptivity; and
- false oestrus increases the inclusive fitness of the simulating female, either by increasing the access of related females to suitable males, or by encouraging appropriate oestrus behaviours from female relatives who are not responding correctly to males.
Although the observed data do not fully conform to the predictions of any of these hypotheses, we rule out the first two, and tentatively suggest that parous females most likely exhibit false oestrus behaviours in order to demonstrate to naïve relatives at whom to direct their behaviour.
Last edited on Sun Apr 25th, 2010 08:22 pm by sydneyst
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sydneyst
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Posted: Tue Aug 4th, 2009 06:11 am |
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Rupert Sheldrake Answers His Critics on Powers of Animals
Unexplained Powers of Animals
by Rupert Sheldrake
In the late 1980s and early 1990s I explored a variety of experimental approaches for the investigation of unexplained phenomena that might help to enlarge our scientific view of the world, summarised in my book Seven Experiments That Could Change the World: A Do-It-Yourself Guide to Revolutionary Science (1994).
One of the seven experiments concerned unexplained abilities of animals, and I published a series of papers on the unexplained powers of animals,
see Papers on animals . I summarised much of this research in my book Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home, And Other Unexplained Powers of Animals (1999).
My research with Aimée Morgana into the telepathic powers of her African Grey Parrot, Nkisi, led to the celebrated debate at the London RSA with Prof Lewis Wolpert, which is featured on this website The Telepathy Debate More information is available on Nkisi, including a tape of one of his conversations with Aimée in The Nkisi project
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Last edited on Tue Aug 4th, 2009 06:12 am by sydneyst
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sydneyst
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Posted: Tue Jul 28th, 2009 01:39 am |
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More on Crow Recognition of Humans:
NPR has created a video on the research of UW crow researcher, John Marzluff, which shows that crows actually inverted to read the upside down masks of potential persecutors.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=106826971
source: NPR
Crows have this uncanny ability to tell one human from another. And they'll hold a grudge if you do them wrong. But can you tell one crow from another?
Last edited on Tue Jul 28th, 2009 01:56 am by sydneyst
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sydneyst
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Posted: Tue Jul 28th, 2009 12:10 am |
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Crows Never Forget a Face...and
Have a Sense of Who is Dangerous
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/26/science/26crow.html?_r=1
Experiment shows that crows rembered behavior that was threatening and showed agitation in subsequent encounters with the same person or a person wearing a mask of the same face. Professors suggest that this provides an evolutionary advantage, particularly in dealing with humans which crows have co-evolved with. Last edited on Tue Jul 28th, 2009 01:42 am by sydneyst
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