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iheartcrows: beggy beggy 2 by ~shochin Crow contemplating feeding a begging baby Stellar’s jay. (see source for more info.)

iheartcrows:

beggy beggy 2 by ~shochin

Crow contemplating feeding a begging baby Stellar’s jay. (see source for more info.)

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Calling a wolf an alpha is usually no more appropriate than referring to a human parent or a doe deer as an alpha. Any parent is dominant to its young offspring, so “alpha” adds no information. Why not refer to an alpha female as the female parent, the breeding female, the matriarch, or simply the mother? Such a designation emphasizes not the animal’s dominant status, which is trivial information, but its role as pack progenitor, which is critical information. The one use we may still want to reserve for “alpha” is in the relatively few large wolf packs comprised of multiple litters. … In such cases the older breeders are probably dominant to the younger breeders and perhaps can more appropriately be called the alphas. … The point here is not so much the terminology but what the terminology falsely implies: a rigid, force-based dominance hierarchy.
 L. David Mech (via wolveswolves)

(via canidcompendium)

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By Albert J. Valentino

(via howtoskinatiger)

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rhamphotheca: Strongest Evidence of Animal Culture Seen in Monkeys and Whales by Michael Balter

Until fairly recently, many scientists thought that only humans had culture, but that idea is now being crushed by an avalanche of recent research with animals. Two new studies in monkeys and whales take the work further, showing how new cultural traditions can be formed and how conformity might help a species survive and prosper. The findings may also help researchers distinguish the differences between animal and human cultures.

Researchers differ on exactly how to define culture, but most agree that it involves a collective adoption and transmission of one or more behaviors among a group. Humans’ ability to create and transmit new cultural trends has helped our species dominate Earth, in large part because each new generation can benefit from the experiences of the previous one.

Researchers have found that similar, albeit much simpler, cultural transmission takes place in animals, including fish, insects, meerkats, birds, monkeys, and apes. Sometimes these cultural traits seem bizarre, such as the recently developed trend among some capuchin monkeys to poke each other’s eyeballs with their long, sharp fingernails—a behavior that originated among a small group of individuals and which has spread over time…

(read more: http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2013/04/strongest-evidence-of-animal-cul.html?ref=hp)

(photo: (top, monkies) Erica van de Waal; (bottom, whales) Jennifer Allen/Whale Center of New England; Jennifer Allen/Ocean Alliance)

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astronomy-to-zoology:

Some male Hooded Mergansers (Lophodytes cucullatus) showcasing their ‘impressive’ mating displays.

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snake-time:

butthurtherpetologist reblogged your photo: butthurtherpetologist: xenlightenme: Okay does…

most colubrids of north america flatten their head and body to appear to look more like rattlesnakes. Some even vibrate…
moreanimalia reblogged your photo: butthurtherpetologist: xenlightenme: Okay does…
He’s just puffing his head up / distorting it to appear larger, more threatening and trying to trick the person/animal…
Yeah, I am aware of the tail mimicry but I had no clue they flattened their heads as well. But you learn something new every day. I’ll have to research more into colubrids defense mechanisms.

Learning something new every day is a good thing ^^

Colubrids have a variety of defense mechanisms, some more effective than others!

  • tail rattling
  • vocalisations such as hissing
  • musking
  • flattening the head to make it appear more triangular
  • “S“‘ng the front part of the body up and off the ground
  • opening the mouth to display teeth (often seen with S’ng)
  • flattening the neck in a vertical manner to make the snake appear bigger (again often seen with S’ng)

And then there’s the european grass snake and hognoses which play dead - flipping onto their backs, mouth open and tongue lolling and musk / smell from the cloaca. Though they often will flip themselves onto their back if righted as if insisting they are dead xD

Behaviour is an awesome thing :)

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eduardo-:

They also rape and murder baby seals too! Aren’t they adorable? http://news.discovery.com/animals/the-other-side-of-otters.htm

I don’t think I will ever be able to forget what I just read. The animal kingdom, got to love it!

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canidcompendium: Coddled male wolf cubs father fewer pups In a wolf pack, lots of sibling babysitters can lead to plump, healthy cubs. But too much pampering makes male wolves less successful in later life. To understand the effects of sibling helpers on wolf cubs throughout their lives, Amanda Sparkman from Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario, Canada, and colleagues studied reintroduced red wolves roaming North Carolina by trapping them to record their size and body weight and monitoring their life histories. The researchers studied the wolves when the reintroduced population was just starting out and few in number, and again when the wolves had spread throughout the area and were to be found at higher densities. When wolves were scarce and prey abounded, pups with “helpers” – older siblings still in the family unit – fared better than those without: they were heavier and larger than their helper-less counterparts. At high densities, however, this dynamic flipped for female cubs. With less raccoon to go around, girls living in big families ended up smaller and lighter. High densities had no effect on their brothers, suggesting that male pups aggressively outcompete their sisters for whatever food comes in. The real surprise, however, came in the long-term effects of helpers on cubs. Researchers expected male cubs that had benefited from helpers to turn into reproductively successful adults. In fact, they found the opposite: male wolves that had grown up with helpers actually had fewer offspring over their lifetimes than males that had endured a helper-less cubhood. Sparkman thinks that males who did better food-wise early in life might pay a metabolic price for maintaining their bulky frames. “We assume that if you have helpers and you are bigger, that helps you over all,” said Sparkman. “But there might be some cost to being big that makes you age more quickly.” Meanwhile, the rangy females who’d been forced to vie with older siblings for dinner scraps ended up with higher lifetime reproductive success than those who hadn’t. The researchers speculate that girl cubs that survive the crucible of the sibling scrabble may be “individuals of the highest quality”, capable of eclipsing other wolves. (via NewScientist) Photo by Another Seb

canidcompendium:

Coddled male wolf cubs father fewer pups

In a wolf pack, lots of sibling babysitters can lead to plump, healthy cubs. But too much pampering makes male wolves less successful in later life.

To understand the effects of sibling helpers on wolf cubs throughout their lives, Amanda Sparkman from Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario, Canada, and colleagues studied reintroduced red wolves roaming North Carolina by trapping them to record their size and body weight and monitoring their life histories.

The researchers studied the wolves when the reintroduced population was just starting out and few in number, and again when the wolves had spread throughout the area and were to be found at higher densities.

When wolves were scarce and prey abounded, pups with “helpers” – older siblings still in the family unit – fared better than those without: they were heavier and larger than their helper-less counterparts. At high densities, however, this dynamic flipped for female cubs. With less raccoon to go around, girls living in big families ended up smaller and lighter. High densities had no effect on their brothers, suggesting that male pups aggressively outcompete their sisters for whatever food comes in.

The real surprise, however, came in the long-term effects of helpers on cubs. Researchers expected male cubs that had benefited from helpers to turn into reproductively successful adults. In fact, they found the opposite: male wolves that had grown up with helpers actually had fewer offspring over their lifetimes than males that had endured a helper-less cubhood.

Sparkman thinks that males who did better food-wise early in life might pay a metabolic price for maintaining their bulky frames. “We assume that if you have helpers and you are bigger, that helps you over all,” said Sparkman. “But there might be some cost to being big that makes you age more quickly.”

Meanwhile, the rangy females who’d been forced to vie with older siblings for dinner scraps ended up with higher lifetime reproductive success than those who hadn’t. The researchers speculate that girl cubs that survive the crucible of the sibling scrabble may be “individuals of the highest quality”, capable of eclipsing other wolves.

(via NewScientist)

Photo by Another Seb

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thepunkass-bookjockey: Yellowstone Otter and Coyote by Ian Gethings

(via howtoskinatiger)

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Is This Dingo Mother Mourning Her Dead Pup? →

carnivorecam:

In recent years we’ve seen a number of animals, including elephants, giraffes and chimpanzees, “grieve” over deceased group members. But canids are notably — and surprisingly — absent from the list of mourners. For the first time, researchers have now documented a wild dingo mother showing “care-giving behavior” towards a dead pup. Is this evidence of a canid in mourning?

(via canidcompendium)

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science-junkie:

Why everything you know about wolf packs is wrong
By Lauren Davis

The alpha wolf is a figure that looms large in our imagination. The notion of a supreme pack leader who fought his way to dominance and reigns superior to the other wolves in his pack informs both our fiction and is how many people understand wolf behavior. But the alpha wolf doesn’t exist—at least not in the wild…

Although the notions of “alpha wolf” and “alpha dog” seem thoroughly ingrained in our language, the idea of the alpha comes from Rudolph Schenkel, an animal behaviorist who, in 1947, published the then-groundbreaking paper “Expressions Studies on Wolves.” During the 1930s and 1940s, Schenkel studied captive wolves in Switzerland’s Zoo Basel, attempting to identify a “sociology of the wolf.”

In his research, Schenkel identified two primary wolves in a pack: a male “lead wolf” and a female “bitch.” He described them as “first in the pack group.” He also noted “violent rivalries” between individual members of the packs… Thus, the alpha wolf was born. Throughout his paper, Schenkel also draws frequent parallels between wolves and domestic dogs, often following his conclusions with anecdotes about our household canines. The implication is clear: wolves live in packs in which individual members vie for dominance and dogs, their domestic brethren, must be very similar indeed.

A key problem with Schenkel’s wolf studies is that, while they represented the first close study of wolves, they didn’t involve any study of wolves in the wild… In more recent years, animal behaviorists, including [wildlife biologist L. David] Mech, have spent more and more time studying wolves in the wild, and the behaviors they have observed has been different from those observed by Schenkel and other watchers of zoo-bound wolves. In 1999, Mech’s paper “Alpha Status, Dominance, and Division of Labor in Wolf Packs” was published in the Canadian Journal of Zoology. The paper is considered by many to be a turning point in understanding the structure of wolf packs…

Mech’s studies of wild wolves have found that wolves live in families: two parents along with their younger cubs. Wolves do not have an innate sense of rank; they are not born leaders or born followers. The “alphas” are simply what we would call in any other social group “parents.” The offspring follow the parents as naturally as they would in any other species. No one has “won” a role as leader of the pack; the parents may assert dominance over the offspring by virtue of being the parents. While the captive wolf studies saw unrelated adults living together in captivity, related, rather than unrelated, wolves travel together in the wild. Younger wolves do not overthrow the “alpha” to become the leader of the pack; as wolf pups grow older, they are dispersed from their parents’ packs, pair off with other dispersed wolves, have pups, and thus form packs of their owns.

This doesn’t mean that wolves don’t display social dominance, however… Wolves (and other animals, including humans), display social dominance, it just isn’t always easy to boil dominant behavior down to simple explanations. Dominant behavior and dominance relationships can be highly situational, and can vary greatly from individual to individual even within the same species. It’s not the entire concept of wolves displaying social dominance that was dispelled, just the simple hierarchical pack structure…


Source: io9.com

Images credit: Caninest - Michael Cummings

Thissssss

(via fuckyeahwolves)

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fairy-wren: competing ruffs (photos by nordfold)

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canidcompendium: Behavioural responses of red foxes to an increase in the presence of golden jackals: a field experiment

The golden jackal, Canis aureus, and the red fox, Vulpes vulpes, are two common canids in Israel. Although the two species have similar diets, the jackal is about three times larger than the red fox. The current evidence for interspecific competition between these two canids is circumstantial and indirect.

In this study we aimed to measure experimentally the response of red foxes to increasing exposure to the presence of the golden jackal. Our field experiments comprised three stimuli: urine as a scent stimulus, a mounted specimen and urine as a static animal-image stimulus, and a caged pet animal as a live animal stimulus. The treatment and control were placed near food trays, and the behaviour of foxes around these trays was documented by video recorders. In most cases, the presence of scent or cast of a golden jackal did not alter the behaviour of the foxes. However, foxes avoided the test arena when a live jackal was present. This finding provides strong evidence that red foxes fear jackals, and shows that foxes are more concerned when a live jackal is present. The possible implications of the observed fox behaviour for the understanding of large-scale competitive exclusion among canid species are discussed.

Read full paper

Photos by Martin Pettit and Michele Mendi

(via thegreenwolf)

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joshbyard: Animal Consciousness: Corvids Demonstrate a Sense of Fairness a pair of biologists at the University of Vienna trained six carrion crows and four ravens to exchange pebble tokens for food. The researchers then created same-species pairs for a series of experiments. When the birds saw their partners getting food for free, without having to exchange tokens, they tended to exchange tokens less often. Sometimes the birds that got the short shrift even gave away tokens, but refused to take their reward. Other research has suggested that a sense of equity evolved several times in unrelated animals, the University of Vienna researchers write. Knowing what’s fair is linked to cooperative behavior in species, they say, and that makes sense with crows and ravens, which form alliances and share food and information. (via New Study Says Unfairness Really Ruffles Crows’ Feathers | Popular Science) Corvids = da bomb

joshbyard: Animal Consciousness: Corvids Demonstrate a Sense of Fairness

a pair of biologists at the University of Vienna trained six carrion crows and four ravens to exchange pebble tokens for food. The researchers then created same-species pairs for a series of experiments. When the birds saw their partners getting food for free, without having to exchange tokens, they tended to exchange tokens less often. Sometimes the birds that got the short shrift even gave away tokens, but refused to take their reward. Other research has suggested that a sense of equity evolved several times in unrelated animals, the University of Vienna researchers write. Knowing what’s fair is linked to cooperative behavior in species, they say, and that makes sense with crows and ravens, which form alliances and share food and information.

(via New Study Says Unfairness Really Ruffles Crows’ Feathers | Popular Science)

Corvids = da bomb

(via howtoskinatiger)

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mere-mereology:

kiss-my-aspergers:

OH MY SODDING GOD THIS IS FUCKING ADORABLE

Crow playing fetch.  :)

*grabby hands*

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