• Question: Do you think animal's behavior can depend on the environment they live on?

    Asked by Gala to Carrie, Cedric, Ellen, Rupert on 15 Mar 2017.
    • Photo: Ellen Williams

      Ellen Williams answered on 15 Mar 2017:

      Yes definitely – animals adapt to their environment and one of the easiest things to adapt (we call it plastic) is behaviour. So behaviour is one of the first things to change when the environment of an animal is changed. This is why we can use behaviour in welfare assessment when we are looking at animals in zoos.

    • Photo: Carrie Ijichi

      Carrie Ijichi answered on 15 Mar 2017:

      It definitely affects their behaviour. The environment is a really strong driver for how animals evolve so over a very long time it can affect innate behaviour (the behaviour that’s driven by genetics). Within an animal’s lifetime is might have to learn and adapt to cope with the challenges of its environment too so this will affect their learnt behaviour too.

    • Photo: Cedric Tan

      Cedric Tan answered on 15 Mar 2017:

      Yes definitely it will depend on the environment they live in. If the environment is not rich enough to support many individuals, birds will start helping relatives to take care of a few young rather than having young themselves. Similarly, an eagle might kill its own young and feed it to its siblings if there is just not enough food. Sorry to be so gruesome!

      There are many more examples. In relation to my research, we found that the clouded leopard prefer places of higher elevation and away from water bodies and we think that its because the clouded leopard is avoiding humans who prefer flatter grounds and rivers, especially when it comes to cutting trees and fishing.

      Here’s the video, hope you like it!

    • Photo: Rupert Marshall

      Rupert Marshall answered on 15 Mar 2017:

      Definitely yes. Behaviour is a response to a stimulus. If you touch a frog-hopper it will jump. But you have still changed its behaviour from what it was doing before – sitting still doing nothing. But will it jump as far if it is colder or warmer? Lots of animals change their response depending on what is happening around them – heat, cold, other animals, risks and more.
      How windy it is might change how much a bird flaps its wings. How hungry it is might change how long a cheetah hunts its prey. How thirsty it is might change how long a zebra stays at a waterhole before leaving (there are lots of predators near water holes so it should stay there as short a time as possible).

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