Transcript Communication

Communication
Psychology 3107
Introduction
Animals spend a lot of time communicating
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Defense
Mating
Food sources
To say communication has occurred we need a
sender and a receiver
As usual, we can look at evolutionary change, or
adaptive value (or both of course)
You can dance if you want to….
Dance language of the
honeybees
Function is to
communicate location of
food sources to hive
members
Hive members then can
interpret the dance
They then go out in the
right direction and
distance (or just right
direction, depends) and
find the food
The Round Dance
Used only if food source is < 50 m away
Number of circuits in a given time tell how far
away food source is
No direction info is given with the round dance
The Waggle Dance
If food source is > 50 m away
Redundant sources of distance info
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Number of circuits
Number of waggles
Number of sound bursts
All proportional to distance
Angle of straight line portion of dance
gives compass direction!
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Up is where the sun is in the sky
If you don’t think this
is cool…..
If they are forced to
dance in the open air,
they will actually use
the sun rather than
‘up means sun’
Reconstructing the evolution of the
honeybee dance
Lindauer’s work
All honeybees dance
All other Apids dance,
but Apis Florea uses
a sort of open air
‘dance floor’
And the story continues…
Some Trigona
species just get exited
and hum a lot
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Giving out food in the
process actually
Other Trigona species
leave a scent mark as
well
Melipona give out
pulses of sound
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Sort of leads ‘em out
Adaptive Value
The Hive works together anyway, so its best to
get to food quickly, by getting others involved
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The hive works together, but for very specific reasons,
and it is not altruism, more on that when we get there
Don’t have to waste time leading others out, risk
predation etc
Costs?
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Other animals could interpret the signal
Very unlikely in the bee example
Sometimes other animals get the
signal…..
Tungura Frogs
Females like the ‘whine
chuck’ call
Everybody whine chuck tonight….
(Drives the babes wild)
But, umm, bats like it too,
and bats eat frogs!
When they are alone,
males only whine, when
they are with other males,
they ‘whine chuck’
You might just get what you wish
for, so be careful..
Male European toads
call
Biggest females
respond
Ummm errr, well,
ummm, it can get
ugly, lets’ just say
that….
Conclusions
Animals communicate alll the time
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Olfactory
Calls
Various other signals
Others can learn to pick up on the signals
Nothing like language though!
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Humans win humans win!!!