Social Behavior

Yes that is right, I finally updated my blog theme. I love cats, and it seemed appropriate for a class on the study of animals and animal behavior. This week's chapter was on social behavior. I always like reading about how they test these types of things because sometimes when I first hear them I wonder how anybody could possibly know what they claim to know. Some of my favorites from this week focused on size.

 The first measured how big stickelback fish got when they were raised alone in an aquarium versus grouped in a aquarium with the same water to fish ratio and plenty of food in both cases. They found that the fish raised alone were bigger. But what I found interesting is that they had the same question I did. What aspect of living in a group made the fish smaller? The book lists it's best guess as aggressive interactions.


One of my other favorites is an example of how science can get messy. Researchers dug through coyote poop to determine if group size affected their diet. They grouped what they found in their poop into three different sizes of animal, and found that larger groups do indeed feed more often on larger animals than small groups or individuals. Playing with poop for science.