Are you smarter than a pigeon? We don't mean smarter as in able to figure out why it's $14 a day for lousy internet access in a hotel or $14 to see an old movie in your hotel room or the hospitality industry's general preference for the number 14, we mean practical social smarts, like meeting the opposite sex. Animals have "social smarts" too, it turns out, with a range of behaviors that can enhance species survival, according to studies being presented here in Chicago at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) annual meeting.
Evolution shouldn't leave out social behavior, it seems.
Gail Patricelli, assistant professor of evolution and ecology at the University of California, Davis, is using a robotic seductress (*) to learn why "the male sage-grouse may need not only a big flashy display, but also the ability to use it appropriately." A top male sage-grouse can strut both faster and more precisely, she says, whereas less successful males "just blast away."
Patricelli and other experts are participating in the symposium entitled "Beyond the Beagle: Evolutionary Approaches to the Study of Social Behavior."
Among birds, says Kevin McGraw, an assistant professor in the School of Life Sciences at Arizona State University in Tempe, colors that individuals can see may affect their diet and mate choices.
Jan Randall, professor of biology at Stan Francisco State University in California is measuring stress hormone levels in feces samples from desert gerbils and kangaroo rats. David McDonald, an associate professor at the University of Wyoming, Laramie, is exploring why unrelated male manakin birds would cooperate to attract females, by singing and dancing together.
Female manakins always remember the single best male, he says, so less successful suitors must bask in the reflected glory of the resident hotdog.
NOTES:
(*) Not the Actroid female Japanese robot wearing the "Hello Kitty" shirt.
