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Foraging humans, mammals and birds who live in the same place behave similarly

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21–24 of 24 posts

Re: Foraging humans, mammals and birds who live in the same place behave similarly

#21
I recently moved to a very dangerous place from one of the safest places in America. I've noticed changes in my behavior, and also the behavior of those around me.

There is almost a palpable brackish area where trust meets distrust.

I've always been a resilient cooperator, so I hope I can withstand the waves that are washing over me.

Some people adapt to their surroundings, and others blunder blindly forward in spite of any danger. If the ones pushing the boundary of safety to reap great rewards do well, others will emulate them.

If that fruit is poisoned though, the ones watching will be more cautious.

Are you the type of person who will cut down the strange fruit, and build a future of trust, safety, and dignity for all? I hope I am.

Re: Foraging humans, mammals and birds who live in the same place behave similarly

#22
post #2

Interesting, but is it surprising? I would expect most species to adapt to surroundings, and if something works well for one, then surely there is a large chance it may work for other species too?

It's an analysis of observational data. It doesn't have to be surprising. Anyway it's nice to get a confirmation of something we might have only suspected before.

Re: Foraging humans, mammals and birds who live in the same place behave similarly

#23
post #8

Does anyone have access to the paper? The article really doesn't do enough for me. What are the 15 behaviors the biologist was tracking? Here's the paper page: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/371/6526/292 and sci-hub came up empty. EDIT found a PDF download link here: https://osf.io/fw9ge/download

Table derived from Fig 2. in the paper:

  1. Foraging Behavior
  ====================
     1.1    Meat diet
     1.2    Fish diet
     1.3    Food storage
     1.4    Day range
     1.5    Migratory distance

  2. Reproductive Behavior
  ========================
     2.1    Age at first reproduction
     2.2    Polygyny
     2.3    Patrilocality
     2.4    Exogamy
     2.5    Divorce

  3. Social Behavior
  ==================
    3.1    Paternal care
    3.2    Population density
    3.3    Group size
    3.4    Distribution range
    3.5    Social classes

Re: Foraging humans, mammals and birds who live in the same place behave similarly

#24

It's always interesting to see how the press office paints these things as historic eureka moments. These results, while fascinating, are basically in line with what we call Behavioral Ecology and more specifically, Human Behavioral Ecology. The latter has emerged as a pretty strong framework in the past few years. This sort of support is nice to see (and there's been a decent bit of buzz about this particular paper!…

> Human Behavioral Ecology

I would say we are increasingly in a society were popular sentiment is hostile to this category of explanation.

It doens't hurt to popularize it.

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