Question

One problem examing wheather a commincation system more resembles exaggerations or "Conspirational whispers" is that it is difficult to know how to define those terms for any given animal social system. How might you overcome this problem? Consider using a comparative study involving many species.

Answer 1

• Where animals have conflicting interests signals become restricted to displays of fighting or other competitive ability.
• These signals reveal the signaller’s ability to meet the costs of the display. The more costly the signal,the more important it becomes,this leads to extravagant advertisements such as peacock displays or the roars of bulls.
• These signals that the animals use as conspirational whispers helps them to signal each other in times of danger or hunting. When animals become familiar with each other's signals, these signals become less repetitive and ritualistic, and easy to understand by the animals.
• Social insects communicating within well-defended colonies offer examples of such highly informative ‘whispering’.
• Some animal activities have become ritualized over the course of evolution so that they now serve a communicative function. Protective reflexes, for example, such as narrowing the eyes and flattening the ears prepare an animal in danger to protect sense organs.
• Some signals are not intentional because they do not predict a change in behaviour therefore,there are inherent problems in defining communication. But some signals which become ritualistic can be used to define animal behaviour.
• For example, visual signals,there is an overemphasized importance of visual communication, most likely because humans and primates are much more dependent on this type of communication than non-primate animals.
• Another type of signal used is, Representational information which imparts information about the environment external to the sender. For example,the honeybee dance language, imparting both the distance and the direction from the hive to food.
• Many animals also use sounds to signal each other. The sound of the eagle indicates a fast flying predator looking for food or even sending an alarm.
• Physical contact is also used as a signal especially in monkeys.apes etc. This indicates their grooming function which is important for social activity. Humans also use these signals for communication.
• There are problems in defining this kind of communication since there are no hard and fast rules but observing and learning about a signal which keeps get repeated at a particular time and in a specific situation, directed towards another member helps in drawing some conclusions about signals used by animals.
• Ritualized behaviours of animals create some kind of sterotyping than the intentional signals which are a little ambiguous and do not provide much information about animal behaviour.