Animal Behavior Lab

This is a DBQ (Data Based Questions Exercise).  It is required by the school and your results will be analyzed and compared with others from the school.  You will be graded on your ability to come up with conclusions from the information given.  Here is the grading criteria.  

The Secret Lives of Animals: Finding a Mate

Whether we’re talking about sexual selection, disguises, infidelity, abandoning children, or even murder, the animal kingdom is full of intrigue and mystery.  According to the theory of natural selection, these behaviors would only have developed if they increased an organism’s fitness (its ability to survive and pass on its genes). Let’s take a look at the biological processes that drive the dramatic lives of the animal kingdom.

Fireflies: Mimicry & Murder

Many animals mimic other animals or plants in order to camouflage with their surroundings and lower their chances of being eaten by predators.   Fireflies, on the other hand, do everything they can to stand out.  They can create a flash on their abdomen through a process called bioluminescence, which takes a significant amount of energy to produce.  So how can a feature that makes a notoriously slow insect stand out to predators, and use a lot of energy actually improve a firefly’s existence?  You guessed it. Finding a mate. 

Each species of firefly has their own specific pattern they flash to attract mates, reproduce, and pass on their genes.  The males fly around and flash their pattern, then wait for a female to flash her single response from the ground.  But what about attracting predators?  Wouldn’t the glowing abdomen make them easy prey?  Many species of firefly have a chemical in their blood called lucibufagin, which makes them extremely unpalatable (taste bad) to predators like spiders and birds. 

So far, from an evolutionary standpoint, this makes sense.  Fireflies are able to attract mates, while still repelling predators.  But, nothing in nature is ever that simple.  Sometimes, when a male firefly receives a response signal and flies to the ground to check out his perspective mate, things take a deadly turn. 

The specific flashes that summon male fireflies could come from females of the same species, but just as likely, the signaling females could be of a different genus, Photuris, and they're not especially interested in courtship.  Rather, the lethal lady fireflies are luring males close enough to eat them.

Photuris fireflies are unable to produce their own lucibufagin, and without it, are extremely vulnerable to predators.  They can, however, consume it, making them unpalatable again to hungry predators.  Female photuris fireflies have figured out a way around this bump in the road.  They are able to mimic the response pattern of other species of fireflies, and when a male containing lucibufagin responds to the signal, they capture and eat them.

Bowerbirds: Professional Homewreckers

Like humans, many species of birds rely on their good looks or their dancing skills to find a mate.  Male bowerbirds, however, are stepping up their game and raising the bar for us all.  Bowerbirds are a family of twenty species that are native to Australia and New Guinea that are renowned for their unusually complex mating behavior.  They rely, not on their brute strength and their flashy looks, but on their artistic and architectural skills. 

Bowerbirds build elaborate mating stages, called bowers, in order to woo a female.  They then meticulously collect and arrange objects all over this bachelor pad for a period of several months to improve their chances of mating.  These objects can include: flower petals, animal bones, shells, pebbles, moss, and even human objects like straws, buttons, small children’s toys, glass, coins, and more.  One species of bower bird uses charcoal or chewed up berries to “paint” the walls of his bower.

Female bowerbirds come to inspect the bowers, while the male holds his best objects in front of her face, one-by-one, in hopes of impressing her.  Bowers typically need to be built in covert locations, not only to avoid predators, but to avoid other males.  Almost always the females choose the older, more experienced males, but as you might have guessed, the younger males have their own tactic as well – home wrecking.

During breeding season, males stay near their bowers as much as possible, not just in case a female comes by, but also to keep out other males.  Remember, this is a competition.  Males will often steal the most impressive gems from their neighbor’s bower, completely destroy another male’s bower, and even go as low as interrupting actual courtship.  Petty, no?  The benefit to this is the other male will not be able to mate again until he can rebuild and redecorate his bower.  The downside to being this devious and petty is that while a male is destroying another male’s nest, he must leave his own nest unguarded open for destruction. 

Crows: Gossip Queens

Crows have a lot of reputations: brooding, loud, ominous, scavengers, and harbingers of bad tidings.  They’re highly intelligent and adaptable animals that can use tools to solve problems and have managed to thrive in human-dominated areas.  New research suggests they have a new title: Petty.   

Researchers in Seattle found this out the hard way.  After spending 5 years capturing and banding crows they started to think the crows were recognizing and attacking them in a systematic way.   They were either really paranoid, or on to something big.  So, these scientists spent another five years, capturing and banding crows to investigate their suspicions.   They wore masks with realistic features and continued to capture crows.

As expected, the crows were extremely unhappy when being caught.  These crows quickly learned their lesson and scolded or even attacked the mask-wearer associated with being caught.   Unexpectedly, however was that over months, even birds that hadn’t been caught by the researchers would scold and mob them when they wore the mask. 

But over the years, the researchers found, the mobbing became more and more widespread. In February, Marzluff said, he ventured out of his office in a mask he'd worn five years earlier while trapping seven birds.

"I got about 50 meters [165 feet] out of my office and I had about 50 birds on me, scolding me," he said. "I hadn't worn that mask on campus for a year."

"Most of the birds that are scolding us are not the ones we captured," said study researcher John Marzluff, a professor of wildlife science at the University of Washington and an occasional victim of crow attacks. "It's likely that they're learning from their parents and their peers that this dangerous person is still out there."

Hitchcockian Crows Spread the Word About Unkind Humans  By Stephanie Pappas, Live Science Contributor | June 28, 2011 07:01pm ET

https://www.livescience.com/14819-crows-learn-dangerous-faces.html