• Question: What did you discover?

    Asked by Ccebria13 to Rupert, Ines, Ellen, Cedric, Carrie on 7 Mar 2017. This question was also asked by 482anmh48, Hugobt11, 665anmh49.
    • Photo: Rupert Marshall

      Rupert Marshall answered on 7 Mar 2017:

      Lots of little things. Scientists move forward very slowly – we tackle big questions one step at a time. We need to be sure our ideas are right and that means careful watching and testing – even for animal behaviour. If one animal does something, it doesn’t mean all animals will.
      Here are 3 things I have discovered, in no particular order:
      1) When male canaries sing songs the females like, the females lay bigger eggs
      2) Great tits (garden birds) sing at a higher pitch in noisy areas than quiet areas. And they don’t respond to songs which are higher, or lower, than they are used to.
      3) Fish follow bold fish – the first fish to move will often be followed by the whole shoal. (I don’t just study birds 🙂

    • Photo: Ellen Williams

      Ellen Williams answered on 7 Mar 2017:

      Life is full of discovery! I discovered that actually I can be a pretty patient person when I need to be (this shocked me!) and i discovered that there is nothing that can’t be overcome with a little hard work and good will.

      In terms of research I learned that:
      – elephants spend longer resting if they have pals to sleep with
      – elephants prefer to lie on sand than hard surfaces
      – elephants sleep for longest between 10pm and 6am

    • Photo: Ines Goncalves

      Ines Goncalves answered on 7 Mar 2017:

      oh hm… let’s see: I discovered that red siamese fighting fish males are more aggressive than blue or white males. It’s still a mystery to me, but red in general seems to be linked to aggression and competitive ability in nature. In fact, a couple of studies on team sports have reported that teams that wear red have a higher chance of winning that teams that wear other colours! What else… I discovered that in pied flycatchers (small birds), for a given degree of hunger, the smaller nestlings beg longer and louder than their larger siblings. I also discovered than in the broad-nosed pipefish, small males are not as good father than larger males, and so females add extra proteins to the eggs they transfer to small males, like they are trying to make it up to the offspring for the dad’s lower quality. Here’s a link to an article about it: http://fusedjaw.com/news-old/for-pipefish-measly-mr-mom-needs-help/.

    • Photo: Carrie Ijichi

      Carrie Ijichi answered on 13 Mar 2017:

      i discovered that horse and dog personality affects how they respond to pain when they’re in the vets just the way people differ when they feel pain. Some of them seem to be able to tolerate more pain and some make a really big fuss!

    • Photo: Cedric Tan

      Cedric Tan answered on 13 Mar 2017:

      Great question!

      The fascinating life about the clouded leopard, where it likes to live in and these information, it can help with authorities protecting the suitable habitat. Have a look at the recent video on this discovery:

      Previously, when I was doing my PhD, there were many interesting behaviour about flies and chickens that also really cool!

      Here’s a website of a short write-up of one of my papers:

      And two videos showing other discoveries

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