Set 8 - Culture & Anti Predator Behaviour

Jane Goodall

Ran longer running study, discussing personality, emotion and tool use in chimps without any educatioon

Orangutan

Makes tools from shaping twigs to reach into small areas and have predisposition to handedness

Harvesting Termites in Chimps in Congo

1. Break into tunnel with a thick stick

2. Thin stick as a brush to extract termites

Hand Clasping Culture

Vary between palm to palm and wrist to wrist

Every Group of Chimps have

Own set of traditions/distinct cultures

Chimp Tradition Experiment

Had 2 high ranking females to learn to poke or lift, with a week of observation, all chimps from each group learned their respective method even with a 2 month break

Culture

Collection of local traditions that’s uniquely identified in certain population

Tradition

Distinctive behavioural pattern shared with 2+ individuals in a social group that continues over time and practicers learn it through social learning

Brain and body weight on a log-log scale

Proportional, but intercept varies among classes

Measures of Brain Size?

• Innovation

• Social learning

• Executive brain

Innovation

New solutions to environmental or social problems

Executive Brain

Neocortex and striatum involved in social learning and innovation

Relative Volume of Brain Region

Ratio of brain area to another brain area or whole body

Executive Brain Ratio

Executive brain/brain stem

Innovation weakly

Correlated with executive brain ratio

What’s the relationship between social learning/group size and brain size

No association

Brain size positively correlated with

Fruit eating because fruits must be remembered and seasonal

Simple Social Learning

Observer learn from models via some cues of signals

Sweet indicates

Simple Carbs

Bitter indicates

Poisonous, spoiled foods

Salty indicates

Essential nutrients because it was very rare

Sour

Evolved from a single origin in vertebrates, some like it or not, but there’s no know adaptive significance

Umami indicates

Protein, specifically free glutamate because the only way we can detect it, is to taste the molecules directly

Fat

High energy content (9kJ), sensed through feeling

Annelid Worms

Defends themselves by distracting predators with green fluorescent bombs

Globules

Bioluminescent sacs that light up shortly when released, homologous to another structure in annelid worms

Hymenoptera secrete

Viscous compound on their cavities that can glue predator’s appendages, sometimes killing them

Types of Anti Predator Behaviour

Avoiding, or reacting to predator

Camouflaging

Blending into the environment, and doesn’t have to be a behavioural action, may already have it

Peromyccus Mouse

Have fur blending into the beach from a single mutation of melanocortin-1 receptor

Ways Cuttlefish can camouflage

1. Uniform camouflage

2. Mottled camouflage

3. Disruptive camouflage

Uniform Camouflage

Takes on a single skin colour

Mottled Camouflage

Change skin with small dark and light dots mimicking background, often for small rocks and dark algae

Disruptive Camouflage

Change into light and dark stripes to break the shape of the cuttlefish

Dolphins prey on

Male toadfish when they hear them boat whistle during breeding season

Clicks and Pops

Sounds dolphins use to forage

Toad and Dolphin Experiment

When toads were played to pop sounds, they reduced their boat whistling by 50% and maintained reduction for 5 minutes following exposure, and had higher cortisol

Bird Tree Nesting is

Ancestry, and other cavity evolved independently many times in Australian and amazonian parrots

Cause of Other Cavity Nesting

Predation pressure causing longer nesting periods

Rabbits detect predators by

Smell, and decrease their use of the area with the odour but not to quoll because they don’t have an evolutionary past

Frontal Cortex Area

Regulates effect of stressors on behaviour in humans and mice

When mice are exposed to predator smell and UMR device

Acetylcholine, dopamine, serotonin increase, which could be counteracted with chlordiazepoxide

Behaviours once a predator is encountered

• Fleeing

• Approaching to get information

• Feigning death

• Signalling to predator

• Fighting

Animals far from their territory will

Flee from predator sooner

Animals involved with foraging, mating, fighting are

Slower to flee than others not in behaviour

Presence of Armour

Decrease flight initiation distance, and not likely to flee

Prey flee at a greater distance as a function of

Experience with predator

Schooling and variation in body armour in on

Chromosome 4/

Eda Gene

Controls schooling behaviour, more active in high predation

Rey Eye Treefrog eggs will hatch late when

snake and wasps predation is weak to allow them to grow

Red Eye Treefrogs eggs will hatch immediately when

Clutch has been attacked and sense vibration spacing and duration

Approach Behaviour

Series of moves to predatory interrupted by stationary pauses and sometimes alternating with moves away from predator for vertebrates

Approaching Behaviour may

• Decrease current risk of predation because cheetahs move farther between risk and hunting periods, causing them to leave early

• Allow gazelles to gather information

• Warn others about dangers

Negative genetic correlation between

Feigning death and flying abilities in beattles

When long and short death groups were selected

Beatles in long death shower death times 40x as long as short death, were really poor flyers, and had high dopamine

When best and worse flyers were selected

Beatles in the best flyers were good flyers and displayed short fake death times

Monarch Caterpillars eat milkweed plants to be

Toxic for birds, and birds only realize once they’ve eaten the caterpillar, causing an association for monarch colour and illness

Why is toxicity favoured in Monarch Butterflies

Detection of toxic may be sensed before eating, serving as a warning to predators for the rest of the population

Flagging

Lifting tail and flashing white rump patch

Ungulates flag their tails

After predator has been spotted, usually from a safe distance

White Tailed Deer running fast

Flags their tails to tell predator an attack will be unsuccessful becase it’ll flee them

Snorting

Ungulates use to deters attack as it indicates health and vigor of signaler

Bombardier Beatles

Spray predators with noxious spray upto 20x before depleting

Bombardier Reservoirs

• Reservoir: hydroquinones and hydrogen peroxide

• Reaction chamber: holds catalases and peroxidases

• When mixed, it is shot out with an audible pop and 100 temperature

Origin of Bombardier Spray

Ancestor of M. Contratus where it sprays a fine mist or froth

M. Contratus Spray

• When attacked from the rear, it froths on the body and wards off predatory

• When attacked from the front, a chemical is secreted on the forewings which lowers the temperature

Mob

Multiple individuals join together and aggressively attempt to chase away predator

Young Blackbirds Social Learning

When seeing a model mobbing an unknown predator (model was actually mobbing a predator but naive couldn’t see it), it’ll learn to mob it

Transmittance of Mobbing Timeline

Can go upto 6 birds

Squirrels alter foraging

From predation of red-tailed hawks, opting for bigger, less profitable pieces of food and bringing their food back to a safe area

Squirrels Foraging without predation

Squirrels will take the smaller, profitable food

What’s the main message?

Gulf toadfish become silent after hearing dolphin whistles and pops

What’s the main message?

Rabbits decrease their use of areas that had scent of three evolutionary history predators

What’s the main message?

Average body angle in schooling, Eda benthic was more similar to marine fish (high pred)

What’s the main message?

Natural selection has shaped heritability of conditioned fear responses 

What’s the main message?

Tree frog eggs respond to wasp predation by hatching early

What’s the main message?

Red eyed tree frogs respond to snake predation by hatching earlier than normal

What’s the main message?

Approach probability increases with gazelle group size, and cheetah moving away distance with gazelle group size

What’s the main message?

Negative correlation with flying ability when selection is on death feigning

What’s the main message?

Lines selected for long fake death had higher concentration of dopamine in thieir brain