AVS-4100 Study Guide - Midterm Guide: Dairy Cattle, Social Group, Non-Rapid Eye Movement Sleep
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11 Nov 2020
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Unit 3 Exam Review – Compiled Notes
10 – Social Behavior
• What is social behavior?
o Social behavior is the glue that allows groups of animals to
function, and that allows us to interact with the domestic
animals we care for
▪ Social behavior happens whenever two or more animals
interact
• Ex: humans interacting with animals; crows fighting
over picnic scraps; dogs wrestling in a park; a dairy
cow licking her newborn calf
• Humans are dominant (like deciding what
domesticated animals eat)
o Domestic animals are typically kept in groups; as they are
descended from group-living ancestors
▪ Different types of interaction within the groups (males to
males, males to females, females to females, parents to
young)
▪ Why do animals need to live in groups?
▪ Do you think the ability of animals to live in groups may
have been a prerequisite for domestication?
▪ Do you think nature selected for living in groups? Or how
did social behavior evolve?
• Practice question: what happens when animals live in groups?
o Better detection of danger
o Better defense of the young
o Competition over resources
o Group can be easily detected by predators
o Increased disease
• Why live in a group?
o Living in a group has a lot of benefits but also might initiate
some problems
o Detection of danger
▪ Large groups have many eyes, ears, and noses for early
detection of predators, and can detect danger more
reliably and quickly than solitary individuals
▪ Living in large group reduces the cost of scanning for
predators; as frequent scanning for predator would reduce
efficiency of other behaviors such as “foraging, sleeping”
so each group member can scan less and forage more than
solitary individuals
▪ Ex: horse sleeping very deep when near another horse
(snoring); chicken dreaming when surrounded by other
chickens
o Defense of the vulnerable individuals “young”:
▪ Adults working as a team can defend the young more
effectively against predators
▪ Predators usually prefer to attack vulnerable young of
large animals
• i.e., buffalos, big group of adults acting in a concert
can create a formidable deterrent
o dilution of risk
▪ dilute the risk of predation by forming simple aggregation
▪ a member of a pair should be half as likely to be eaten by
predators as would the same animal on its own “less likely
to be eaten by a predator when you are one of many
possibly prey items”
▪
o Locating and sharing resources:
▪ Group members can share the cost of
• Searching for patchy resources
• Cover more territory
▪ In group foraging animals deploy several strategies to
share the cost of foraging behavior: as some individuals
will serve as food finders while others will be more of
scroungers, and switch
▪ Feeding in groups may also increase the probability of
capturing a prey
• i.e., pack of wolves can kill a moose; no single wolf
can kill a moose
o of course, living in groups would enhance social learning