LSM1303 Animal Behaviour

I love animals. I love them most when they are furry and warm, with whiskers and cute paws and small legs. Who can resist a bunny rabbit hopping around your legs begging you for food? Or a kitty cat snuggling into your arms for a rest? They’re simply irresistible. To do a write up about these cute animals, I might as well be setting up a website like cuteoverload.com, with pictures of baby rabbits, puppies and puggles. So on the contrary, I have decided to do a write up on the most disgusting creature I came across. This creature is by far the most heinous and repulsive, in all aspects, from its physical appearance, to its feeding habits, reproduction and most of all its defence mechanism! I present to you, the Atlantic Hagfish, also known scientifically as Myxine Glutinosa

The hagfish looks like an eel. In fact, it is very often mistaken for an eel and scientists have even debated whether or not it belonged to the fish family or the lampreys. It is the only animal with a skull but no backbone. Picture it as an underwater snake, if you will, with barbels (whisker like organ) instead of fins and a single nostril. Its colour ranges from grey to pink or brown, depending on the species and is found at a depth of 4000 feet underwater, making it a deep sea creature. The Atlantic Hagfish, as its name might suggest, is found on both sides of the North Atlantic Ocean and can go as far up as Norway.

If its appearance is not enough to repulse you, it’s feeding habits might. Albeit relatively small (16 -32 inches), the hagfish possesses a very barbaric and monstrous way of feeding. The hagfish starts off by attaching itself to another healthy fish. Unlike the Remora, the Hagfish does not stay at the sides or underneath its host, feeding on its remains, but bores its way into the host fish. The hagfish then feed on the host fish’s flesh with its tongue, literally eating its host inside out. There are instances where deep-sea fishermen found thousands of hagfish (instead of flesh) inside their catch! Be careful the next time you’re eating a Cod.

Sex with the Hagfish can be confusing. This is because some are hermaphrodites. Yes, they have both male and female sexual organs. A study conducted by Scott I. Kavanagh et Al in 2004 revealed that the production of gonadotropin-releasing hormone is highly seasonal and differs in relation to its size class and stage of gonadal development: “In the medium and large class hagfish, there was an increase in GnRH concentrations during April and May that correlated with male and female gonadal maturity. Also in these size classes of female hagfish, there was a similar rise in GnRH in November and then again in January that preceded the highest incidence of large eggs.”

What is known is that the hagfish’s eggs attach together and the Hagfish will curl itself around the eggs but it is not known if they are taking care of the eggs.Sexual Reproduction in the Hagfish is rarely documented and further study is much needed to those who can withstand its slime and grime.

Yes, the most disgusting fact about the Hagfish? Aside from its confused sexual orientation, its beastly eating habits and its unsightly appearance, the Hagfish is known for its defence mechanism. The slime. When provoked, the Hagfish excretes a whitish substance that, when in contact with water, will develop into a thick, slimy substance that reminds you of your own mucus! A Study by S.Subramanian et Al., discovered that a major constituent of the hagfish extruded slime are trypsin-like proteases. They found that stress induced slime of the Hagfish contains “various innate immune parameters in comparison to its epidermal mucus”. The slime excreted from the hagfish not only protects it from its predators (thickness of the slime clogs predators’ gills), but also from other diseases and micro organisms that might cause infection! Interestingly, the hagfish escapes from its own slime by knotting itself up and pushing this knot through its body.

The video below shows a scientist and his research animal: the hagfish.

If the video doesn’t load, click here to view: Hagfish Slime

Look at how just a teeny bit of excretion did to a beaker of distilled water! Do not underestimate the power of slime.

References:

Scott I. Kavanagh, Mickie L. Powell, Stacia A. Sower, (2005) “Seasonal Changes of Gonadotropin-releasing Hormone in the Atlantic Hagfish Myxine Glutinosa” General and Comparative Endocrinology, Volume 140, Pages 136-143.

S. Subramanian, N.W. Ross, S.L. MacKinnon, (2008) “Comparison of the biochemical composition of normal epidermal mucus and extruded slime of Hagfish (Myxine Glutinosa)” Fish & Shellfish Immunology, Volume 28, Pages 625 – 632

http://www.seasky.org/deep-sea/atlantic-hagfish.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagfish

(picture courtesy of Nadia Kamil)

Elephants, one of the most sociable animals around have often been assumed of their communication merely through loud trunk calls. How do elephants then achieve this over large tracts of land in the wild? Surely the distance would impede communication?

Studies carried out following the Asian Tsunami in 2004 showed that ‘trained elephants in Thailand had become agitated and fled to higher ground before the devastating wave struck, thus saving their own lives and those of the tourists riding on their backs’. (Rodwell, 2005). The elephants were observed to have picked up seismic warnings of oncoming tidal waves and to have retreated to safety.

Elephant talks apparently go beyond trunks-in-the-air-calls and have been observed to be transmitted across vast distances via seismic signals! This secret unravelling has been recorded in Namibia, across vast acres of land where Africa’s wildlife roamed.

Through a study conducted , it was observed that in the herd, ’suddenly, and for no apparent reason, the four males step away from the water and freeze in unison, as if posing for a group action shot’ (Rodwell, 2005), where one of the elephants, unlike the rest, had its trunk ‘flat on the ground, the tip pointing inward toward his front feet’ (Rodwell, 2005). Synchronized freezing is a common behavior in the wild even amongst herds of 20 or more animals. Such synchrony enable the elephants to focus their senses of smells and hearing on unfamiliar noises and odors in the air. However, scientists have observed that in addition, elephants do also sometime stick their trunks close to the earth whilst staying motionless for a brief period of time to detec vibrations in the ground for signs of danger or activity.

Elephants in the wild travelling in herds also transmit vibrational signals through the ground—long-distance seismic messages that could play a crucial role in their survival and reproductive success. (Rodwell, 2005) Scientists have postulated that perhaps these vibrational sounds are sent out to attract potential mates far away, or to warn of oncoming predators in the vacinity through the distress signals from other herds.

Oncoming tides? Look out for trunk calls!

References:

1. W.R. Langbauer Jr, Elephant Communication in Zoo Biology, 30 Nov 2002, Volume 19, Issue 5, pp 425-445.

2. Scientists Unravel the Secret World of Elephant Communication – http://www.physorg.com/news4211.html. Retrieved on13 April 2009.

3. The National Elephant Centre, http://www.thenationalelephantcenter.org/en/art/23/, Vibrations ‘Could Save Elephants’, 14 Feb 2009. Retrieved on 13 April 2009.

4. Kraynak, Cherly,. http://zoology.suite101.com/article.cfm/seismic_communication_in_elephants, 28 Feb 2009. Retrieved on 14 April 2009.

The work of Desmond Morris fascinated me ever since I got hold of a copy of “The Naked Ape” from the school library and read it in hiding since it was not considered kid stuff at that time. I have been collecting his books ever since.

Apart from his multitude of books about human behaviour, there are few purely animal behaviour books including Animal Watching, Cat Watching and Dog Watching. Desmond Morris born in 1928 is most famous for his work as a zoologist and ethologist, but is also known as an author.

He achieved fame in 1967 with his book “The Naked Ape”. The book is a bold look at the human species focusing on humanity’s animal like qualities and our similarity with apes, and for explaining human behaviour as largely evolved to meet the challenges of prehistoric life as a hunter-gatherer. His later studies, books and shows have continued this focus on human and animal behaviour, explained from a bluntly zoological point.

Reference

The Illustrated Naked Ape: A Zoologist’s Study of the Human Animal. Desmond Morris. Review by Janet Dunaif-Hattis. American Anthropologist. Sep 1987, Vol. 89, No. 3: 732–733

Morris, D. (1996). The Human Zoo. Kodansha America Inc. ISBN 1-56836-104-1

To kick things off, here’s a video of a really smart bird.

The smart little Einstein. Isn’t it amazing that animal can actually “talk” and even converse with us?

African grey parrots are known for their ability to “speak” our language. Indeed the African grey parrots are highly intelligent and are able to learn fast. According to a website, the African Gray Parrot is a very talkative, intelligent, and sensitive bird and may be the best talker of all the birds, easily learning hundreds of words and other sounds (Enchanted learning, 209). While it is true that African grey parrots have the ability to learn words and sounds, the questions often asked are: What mechanisms do the parrots have which allow them to learn and to “talk”? What is the best learning method for teaching these parrots to speak our language?

Basically, African grey parrots have the innate ability to mimic – also known as allospecific vocal learning (Pepperberg, 1994). In the wild, African grey parrots imitate voice of other bird species, rather than rely on hardwired vocal communications like other birds, so as to communicate in a more sophisticated method that allows the parrots to express specific contexts (Scientific American, 2009). Similarly, parrots mimic human vocalisations by mapping or adapting them to their own code (Pepperberg, 2002).

African grey parrot in the wild

Such vocal learning by an African grey parrot is best achieved when it is goal-directed. According to research, African grey parrots are found to have learnt best with the presence of live human tutors (Pepperberg, 1994). Research has suggested that human interactions with the African grey parrots such as engaging with them during the learning, rewarding them after they have successfully performed the human vocalisation greatly increase the parrot’s ability to learn. Like many other animal training, reinforcements are important for the animals to pick up abilities which are new to them, which they are not familiar with. Without people to guide them, the African grey parrots do not learn as quickly as those guided by people. Therefore, human presence is important since it helps the parrots to learn by reinforcing the vocalisations with the appropriate cues.

Judging by the parrot’s high ability to learn, they do seem to be smart enough to pick up a diversity of vocalisations through mimicking. Some may argue that repeating the same speech doesn’t exactly make a parrot intelligent. So how smart is a parrot exactly? Does the parrot have the ability to create new speeches from the ones which were taught to it? According to an article, the African grey parrots are able to perform successful vocal segmentation, whereby the birds seem to understand and recombine individual vocal units in novel ways to form a novel vocalization (Pepperberg, 2005). This discovery implies that the parrots have phonological awareness and do have the intelligence to perform linguistic processing. Although the process of getting the parrots to form new speeches is slow and random, yet such process is rather complex for an animal and is also rare. Therefore, this makes the African grey parrot very much an intelligent bird – in the animal sense (since it is not likely to understand the human language as much as we would have loved).

Alex – the smart African grey parrot which was researched upon

Truly, the African grey parrots have become one of the animal celebrities in the showbiz. Though they are smart and charming, we must not forget that teaching these lovable parrots the skill of acquiring human language does conditioned them to the human environment, so much so that living in the wild may seem almost impossible for them to cope and survive well. As what the website has stated “When parrots are kept as pets, they learn their calls from their adoptive human social partners. In the wild, though, their calls may go much higher in pitch and much faster in tempo than any human tutor’s voice” (Scientific American, 2009).

Therefore, it is important that people know the consequences behind training the grey parrots and ensure that domesticated grey parrots are treated with care and love. Because once they have become a pet to keep us accompanied, to entertain us, the parrots would have also lost their ability to grow up in their natural environment and the ability to survive in an environment without us.

Super Star!!!

Reference:

Journal Article:
Irene M. P. (2002). Cognitive and communication abilities of grey parrots. Current Directions in Psychological Science, p. 83-87

Irene M. P. (1994) Allospecific referential speech acquisition in grey parrots (psittacus erithacus): evidence for multiple levels of avian vocal imitation. Imitation in Animals and Artifacts, p.109-131

Irene M. P. (2007) Grey parrots do not always ‘parrot’: the roles of imitation and phonological awareness in the creation of new labels from existing vocalizations. Language Sciences, 29, p.1-13

Irene M. P. (1994). Vocal learning in grey parrots (psittacus erithacus): effects of social interaction, reference, and context. The Auk. 111 (2), p.300-3131

Websites:
http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/birds/printouts/Grayparrotprintout.shtml
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=experts-parrots-mimic

“Making sense of scents: reducing aggression and uncontrolled variation in laboratory mice.” By Professor Jane Hurst, Department of Veterinary Clinical Science, University of Liverpool. NC3Rs #2 Mouse scents and optimal husbandry Sept 2005. National Centre for Replacement, Refinement and Reduction of of Animals in Research.

Abstract – “Scents are the primary means of communication in mice. They underlie most aspects of their social behaviour and are particularly important in mediating aggressive interactions and status differentiation among males. This competitive aggression can be a major welfare concern and source of uncontrolled variation among laboratory mice. Scents also play an invisible role in priming reproductive physiology and development, with additional consequences for immunocompetence, introducing another potential source of uncontrolled variation that could influence many types of experiment.”

“Here, I provide a brief explanation of how wild mice use scents to recognise each other and to control competitive interactions. I then discuss the consequences of this for aggression among laboratory mice and recommend ways to minimize problems through management practices. Known reproductive priming effects are also summarised to show how exposure to scents and cage group size can influence sex hormone levels, reproductive cycling and development. Careful consideration of husbandry and experimental design can also reduce this source of variability.”

Click for larger image

I know some of you missed this so here is the National Geographic Wild Chronicle video, from YouTube:

A check of Google News reveals recent cases; see the results (will change with time):