Donald Griffin. Animal Minds. U. of Chicago Press, paperback edition 1994.
 

Chapter 3. Predation.
 

1. Why does Griffin think that "The challenges of catching prey and escaping capture are just the sort of situations where conscious thinking may be most helpful."?
 

2. Apropos the predatory behavior of pike and the defensive behavior of their minnow prey, Griffin concedes that "one can postulate a complex network of instinctive reflexes to account for the observed behavior, complete with random noise generators at strategic points to explain unpredictable sequences", but he nevertheless insists that "the 'ad hocery' of such schemes increases in proportion to the completeness of our understanding of the natural behavior" to such a degree that it "becomes increasingly plausible, and more parsimonious, to infer that both pike and minnows think in simple conscious terms about their all important efforts to catch elusive food or to escape from a threatening predator."
 

3. Thompson's gazelles (tommies) are preyed upon by many predators from lions to chimpanzees. Describe the defensive behavior of these animals. What would Descartes have inferred from the fact that mother tommies sometimes attack harmless animals or birds when their fawns are not in danger? Is the distracting behavior of adult female tommies non-adaptive or even maladaptive? What about the fact that a tommie who is just about to be caught will futilely double back like a hare? Can these maneuvers be explained by inclusive behaviorists? By a cognitive ethologist who considers what life may be like to these animals?
 

4. What do you make of the Wildebeest cow who interrupted her birth process to attack a seemingly harmless hyena that happened to be walking by and then went off and gave birth? What do you think of Griffin's suggestion that this cow might have realized "that her soon-to-be-born calf was in danger of attack by a hyena"?
 

5. How do tommies and their predators monitor one another? Are the tommies in a state of continual anxiety? Are the predators continually in an alert, attack mode? Do the predators direct their attacks at vulnerable individuals? Why do tommies stott? Why is it advantageous to predator and prey alike to perceive minuscule differences in the behavior, physiology, or deportment of animals of the same and different species? What does this have to do with Clever Hans?
 

6. Why didn't hungry hyenas attack the local territorial male tommies with whom they were well acquainted? Does this show that hyena predation behavior is not stereotypical, as Griffin suggests?
 

7. What do you make of the red fox who caught a shrew, took it off and played with it, and then returned and spit the apparently healthy shrew toward its burrow? What do you think of Henry's suggestion, endorsed by Griffin, that the fox may have released the shrew in anticipation of food or fun on some future occasion?
 

8. Why do some animals hunt cooperatively? Schaller thinks that in group hunting each lioness, although operating more or less independently, exploits the efforts of the other lionesses. Griffin suggests that the lionesses intentionally cooperate by coordinating their tactics. Try to adjudicate this dispute.
 

9. Do Griffin's many illustrations of predation support his conclusion that "animals adjust their behavior with an adaptive versatility that suggests simple thinking about the likely results of various behavior patterns among which they must make split-second choices"?