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"?