Ethology: Why Do Animals Do What They Do? Quiz

Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts

1. Ethology had its beginnings in the late 19th Century. In 1914 Julian Huxley described the ritualised courtship display of a handsome British water bird, which involves pairs posing, head-shaking and running along the surface of the water side-by-side holding bunches of waterweed. What's the name of this bird?

Answer: Great crested grebe

The courtship display of the great crested grebe is a wonder to behold - it's worth watching some of the examples on "YouTube". In it there are classic examples of behaviours that were once useful but have now evolved into ritual, pair-bonding activities, such as collecting nesting material. Swans also have a very elegant courtship ritual, particularly when the male and female birds face each other and pose so that their heads and necks form a heart shape. Darwin's book in this area, "The Expression of the Emotions in Animals and Man", was published in 1872.

2. Three scientists shared a Nobel Prize in 1973 for laying the foundations of modern Ethology. One of them was Konrad Lorenz, who was interested in instinctive behaviour, i.e. behaviour that is not learned but inborn. In his work with greylag goose chicks he described an innate behaviour that greatly increased their chances of survival. What is this behaviour called?

Answer: Imprinting - the goslings would follow the first thing they saw after they hatched

Imprinting is found in many animals, especially in young birds that leave the nest early and have to follow their parents around to survive. The behaviour was actually first described by Sir Thomas More in 1516! In Lorenz's book "King Solomon's Ring" there are wonderful sketches of him being followed by a group of goslings after he'd hatched and reared them so they imprinted upon him. Pecking order is seen in adult group-living birds such as chickens and, interestingly inbreeding suppression is seen in humans - look up the Westermarck Effect!

3. Another of the three Nobel laureates in 1973 was the Austrian ethologist Karl von Frisch. In 1927 he published his book "The Dancing Bees" in which he described how honey bees would "dance" on the surface of a honeycomb. What were the "dancing bees" doing?

Answer: Telling other bees where they could find food

Bees dance to communicate information to other bees about where to find food. A simple "circle dance" tells other bees that there's food within 50m of the hive. The more complex "waggle dance" tells other bees the direction they should travel from the hive to food that is further away, and how long they have to fly to reach it.

This idea was greeted by fellow-scientists with scorn and scepticism; only much later was it accepted. Surprisingly, there are even bee "dialects"!

4. The third Nobel laureate in 1973 was the Dutch biologist Niko Tinbergen. Like Lorenz he was interested in instinctive behaviour, and during his work with gulls he noticed that the adults of some species have a red spot on their lower bills. What seems to be the function of these spots?

Answer: Chicks peck at the spot to make the adult feed them

The spot acts as a releasing stimulus; the chicks have a powerful innate tendency to peck at red dots, which has evolved as a way of stimulating their parents to feed them by regurgitating food. So powerful is this response that chicks will peck even at a disembodied red spot on a stick. I actually met Tinbergen when I was a young post-graduate student in about 1974 - I was sitting next to him at a conference dinner and, not recognizing him, I asked him what he did. I was totally mortified when I realized who it was!

5. Why do some birds - for example geese, cranes, pelicans and ibis - fly in V-shaped formations called skeins?

Answer: Because it conserves their energy when flying

Flying in a skein conserves energy: each bird flies slightly above and to one side of the bird ahead of it, reducing wind resistance. Individual birds take turns being in the front, falling back when they tire. Consequently, birds flying in skeins can fly for long distances before they need to stop for rest.

The authors of a paper in "Nature" in 2001 found that pelicans flying alone beat their wings more frequently and had higher heart rates than those flying in formation, and that birds flying in formation glided more often and thus reduced their energy expenditure. We often have skeins of migrating geese fly over our house, and it's a wonderful sight.

6. Jane Goodall is a world authority on chimpanzees and their behaviour, having studied them at Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania for over 60 years. One of her remarkable discoveries was that chimpanzees were not vegetarian as previously thought; rather, they would systematically hunt and eat smaller primates such as colobus monkeys. Another of her findings was that chimpanzees displayed a particular behaviour that was thought to be exclusively human. What is this behaviour?

Answer: Making and using tools

Goodall observed chimpanzees making and using tools: they would "fish" in termite mounds by stripping twigs of their bark, pushing them into holes in termite mounds and then removing them from the holes covered with clinging termites which they would eat. Humans have for a long time distinguished themselves from the rest of the Animal Kingdom by referring to themselves as "Man the Toolmaker", but to quote the world-famous paleoanthropologist Louis Leakey, "We must now redefine man, redefine tool, or accept chimpanzees as human!". Totally by the way, Goodall has a good relationship with the cartoonist Gary Larson of "The Far Side" fame - he produced a cartoon that many thought was offensive to Goodall, but she really appreciated it and now her work benefits from the sale of a t-shirt decorated with the cartoon.

7. Animals communicate in many ways, visible and non-visible. One of the non-visible means is the secretion by an animal of a chemical messenger that is usually detected by the olfactory system of another individual of that species and triggers a behavioural response. These chemical messengers have a name derived from the ancient Greek words for "to bear" and "hormone" - what are they called?

Answer: Pheromones

Pheromones are found throughout the (mainly terrestrial) animal kingdom and play key roles in areas of behaviour such as aggregation, aggression, sex, social and territoriality. They can work at a tremendous range - some moths and butterflies can detect pheromones up to 10 km from source.

They're also found in humans, especially in armpit and vaginal secretions. I worked on the influences of pheromones on sexual behaviour in rats in the early 1970s; it was a fascinating area of study although the effects were very subtle. Looking back on it I think perhaps we should have looked more closely at the biochemical end of what was going on rather than the behavioural.

8. Before she was murdered by poachers, Dian Fossey uncovered much of what was previously unknown about the behaviour of mountain gorillas during her 20 years of work in Rwanda. One discovery was that troops of gorillas normally consisted of one adult male and a number of females with their offspring. The adult male could be distinguished from all the other gorillas in the troop by its differential hair colouring. What are these adult males called?

Answer: Silverbacks

After the age of about 12, adult male gorillas develop a distinctive patch of silver hair on their backs, and are therefore referred to as "silverbacks"; they also develop large canine teeth. The silverback makes all the decisions for the group: where they go, protection of the females and young, mediating conflicts and so on.

The death of a silverback normally leads to the break-up of the troop. I used to belong to a scientific group that promoted the study of animal behaviour, and we fresh-faced post-grads used to refer to the senior members of the group as "silverbacks"!

9. The mallard, Anas platyrhynchos, is one of the commonest and most widespread species of duck. However the period of their courtship and mating is mayhem - can you say what behaviours male mallards have been observed doing during this period?

Answer: All of them

A very odd feature of mallard populations is that males outnumber females by about five or six to one. The consequence of this is that males are highly motivated to attract and secure a mate. Groups of males frequently chase unattached or straying females and take turns copulating with them; this behaviour was originally termed as "rape".

As the mating process involves the male holding the female's head, repeated matings in a short period can result in the death of the female by drowning. Often this doesn't discourage the males, which will carry on copulating with the dead female. Males will also attempt to mate with other male mallards and sometimes males of other species, and there are also records of male mallards attempting to copulate with dead males.

10. Turning now to human behaviour, in 1976 in his book "The Selfish Gene" Richard Dawkins coined a new word to describe the concept of an idea, behaviour or style that becomes popular and thus by imitation spreads through a human culture. What is this word?

Answer: Meme

Richard Dawkins coined the word "meme" by abbreviating the ancient Greek word "mimeme", meaning "an imitated thing". Basically the concept is that ideas are subject to the same rules of Darwinian evolution as are physical characteristics and behaviours. Thus some memes survive while others become extinct. Memes can be catchphrases, architectural concepts, fashion, anything - in fact, even the word meme is a meme! I met Prof. Dawkins a few times many years ago - I can't say that I particularly liked him, but he was clearly very, very bright.

Source: Author Southendboy

This quiz was reviewed by FunTrivia editor rossian before going online.
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Ethology, the scientific study of animal behaviour especially in the wild, has been been in existence for about 100 years. This quiz presents some of the fascinating things I learned while doing my PhD in the 1970s.

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