Comparative Psychology
...t can be found in another tree. For example, both blue tits and coal tits live in separate trees. Blue tits live in oak trees, and coal tits live in pine trees. Blue tits are better at working harder to get food because the acorns and buds in oak trees are harder to extract food from. Coal tits are not as good at hard work because pine trees are easier to extract food from because they produce the seeds that the coal tits like to eat. Honeybees choose habitat that are farthest apart from each other. When the honeybee swarm selects a new site, and gets a mass of bees to follow the queen, they move a substantial distance from her daughter hive; they reduce the competition for food between the two colonies, increasing the survival chance of both groups. When German bees move, they not only move farther from their old home, but they choose bigger enclosures because they worry about protection in the wintertime. Italian bees, on the other hand, are less likely to go as far from their old home because they are not as worried about protection. A number of organisms leave home around the time of sexual maturity. There appears to be sex differences in dispersion patterns. For example, female ground squirrels stay close to mom, while male ground squirrels get as far away as possible. When looking at birds, males stay closer to their natal sites, while females go farther away. The reason the male stays so close to his natal nest is because he needs to be familiar with the area when it comes time to mate. Migratory birds usually only come back to a nest site that was successful. If they raised a lot of chicks in a nest box, they usually come back to the same location the following year. If for some reason they didn’t have a lot of babies in a nest box, they will just try another nest site the following year. Birds migrate for two reasons, the get away from the cold and to find an abundance of food. Among many mammals, they usually make round-trip journeys of thousands of miles each year. Arctic terns breeding in Canada may complete a roughly 40,000-kilometer migration each year. In other words, that is about 7 trips across the United States. Now, that’s an accomplishment. Reproductive tactics and mating systems Sexual reproduction is famous among multi-cellular organisms among this planet. However, many males actually compete for mates, and females choose very carefully among the competitors because she can only produce a limited number of offspring. This may be due to the fact that male competition usually arises because of the strong male bias to the operational sex ratio, which is the ratio of sexually receptive males to receptive females. When receptive females are scarce, they represent a limiting resource for males, which will compete to have a chance to copulate with those receptive females. When looking at the human race, males like young, healthy, and successful reproducers for their mates. Women look for power, status, and wealth because those are the traits that will ensure that both her and her children will be taken care of. Elephants, on the other hand, behave in a different way. They usually have a month or so of pre-copulatory behavior, which is then followed by three or four 30-minute copulations. The elephants would then form a social relationship, and the female would stick around to take care of the babies. In terms of mating systems, that can be looked at as the number of mates secured by males or females during a mating season. Polygyny is when males fertilize the eggs of many different females. Monogamy is when males have found one mate and they do not seek other mates. Polyandry is a rare case in which males share a single-long-term mate with several other males. Polygyny is very frequent in mammals, and it is less frequent in birds. Defense polygyny is when there is one male protecting a group of females. Resource polygyny is when the male protects its resources. A male impala protects his grazing ground, and when a female grazes there, he mounts and copulates with her. Monogamy is a better strategy for males because he is spending all his reproductive ability on one female. Also, monogamy seems to be more likely when there is synchronous ovulation is species. In some polyandrous species, the male assumes all or most parental responsibilities and females actually compete for access to the males. This is a complete role reversal. Parental behavior People/things invest a lot in the care of their offspring. The female, of the species, has invested so much in the offspring that she spends a great deal of time taking care of it. Males, on the other hand, may not spend as muc...