How understanding the subtle tactics of the parakeet can transform mankind beyond recognition.
In a recent McMaster PNB Colloquium, Dr. Elizabeth Hobson showcased her teams work on dominance hierarchies in birds. Specifically, the parakeet. They beg the question, how do animals handle sociality? Can they even comprehend it? In other words, do they posses an advanced enough cognition? It is crucial to understand that what we observe as “sociality” in animals might just be our own biases clouding our vison. We must always remember; correlation does not equal cognition.
To gain a better understanding of these questions, Dr. Hobson and her team studied a group of parakeets. They painted each parakeet with an array of unique color patterns so they could easily identify each bird and better observe the dominance hierarchy in their group. They discovered a pattern in the parakeets' behavior, which they dubbed the "pile-on rule." When two parakeets engaged in a fight, the observing birds would often target the loser of the fight within 60 seconds of their defeat. This suggests that the parakeets are using the outcome of the fight as a form of social information to make decisions about their own behavior. This finding suggests that the parakeets may be following social rules within their species.
The rapidity with which the observing birds targeted the losers of the fight implies that these birds may have a complex cognitive understanding of their social hierarchy and how to navigate it.
To further test the parakeet’s cognitive complexity, Dr. Hobson and her team looked at weather the parakeet’s aggressive behaviour within the dominance hierarchies was only targeted at lower ranking birds, or if it had a more nuanced element to it. They found that the majority of parakeets attacked lower ranking birds, but some only attacked their close competitors while others liked to bully and attack those much lower in rank than them. This pattern is observed all over the animal kingdom, across taxa and within species, suggesting a more complex and consistent social dominance pattern when it comes to aggression.
However, some species have less developed social dominance hierarchies than others, such as the Northern Bobwhite in Dr. Hobson's study. These birds did not display any complex social dominance patterns beyond just attacking lower-ranking individuals.
Furthermore, older research done on the M. Auratus (a species of fish) demonstrates that some species only use one strategy. When the M. Auratus are introduced to each other for the first time, they will begin sorting out their dominance hierarchy (Nelissen. H, 1985). Although this initially begins with chasing and sizing up among all the fish, they quickly group in pairs relative to their perceived ranking and only fight the fish close to their rank to achieve dominance in the hierarchy (Nelissen. H, 1985). No bullying of lower rank fish or general aggression to lower ranking fish was observed.
Dr. Hobson and colleagues wanted to further test how malleable these dominance hierarchies are. So, they removed the top three ranking parakeets in the group.
They found that, upon reintroduction, the removed parakeets dropped down in rank drastically and were met with substantial amounts of aggression from the other birds. Most of whom displayed the bullying strategy we saw above. The group of birds that were not removed didn’t experience any extreme changes, they simply moved up or down in rank slightly. To test weather this was simply a product of rank, Dr. Hobson conducted another study between two smaller groups of parakeets where various ranking individuals were removed and reintroduced. Interestingly, the medium ranking members were not treated as harshly as the high-ranking members upon reintroduction, often falling substantially less in the rankings relative to the high-ranking parakeets. The rank of the removed bird influences the group's propensity to shift. Does this sound like common sense? Most people would say yes, but that’s because human hierarchies function the same way (the bigger they are, the harder they fall) but remember, don’t let those pesky biases get in your way of proper judgment.
Perhaps all the variation between aggression strategies has to do with the information the species has access to. What information can the species perceive or comprehend? In other words, how advanced is their cognition? Dr. Hobson had highlighted this in a paper before her colloquium talk. She found evidence that ravens have deep and complex social ties to each other, and they employ different aggression strategies depending on who is around them (Hobson. A, 2020). Ravens become more aggressive (winning the fight and moving up rank) when their allies are in close proximity and may backdown or become less aggressive when their foes (or their opponents allies) are in close proximity (Hobson. A, 2020). Some species of bird would copy the aggression strategies of birds close in their rank, like how an MMA fighter would most likely use a fighting style similar to those in his skill level for the best results.
The more knowledge we gain of how dominance hierarchies are formed the better we will come to understand ourselves. Among the most basic of species to the most complex, humans stand at the top. Our cognition puts the parakeet’s dominance hierarchies to shame, yet we share many similarities. These similarities could be the building blocks of our own cognition. By studying animals’ capacity for cognition, we gain new insight into our own; becoming better equipped to handling disputes, control our own anger, care for others, and perhaps even break free from the confines of a dominance hierarchy all together and ascend to the next stage in our cognitive evolution — but let’s not get ahead of ourselves just yet.
References
Hobson, E. A. (2020). Differences in social information are critical to understanding aggressive behavior in animal dominance hierarchies. Current Opinion in Psychology, 33, 209-215. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2019.09.010
Nelissen, M. H. (1985). Structure of the dominance hierarchy and dominance determining "group factors" in 0RW1S34RfeSDcfkexd09rT2melanochromis auratus1RW1S34RfeSDcfkexd09rT2 (pisces, cichlidae). Behaviour, 94(1-2), 85-107. doi:https://doi.org/10.1163/156853985X00280
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